Better Offline CES 2025: Day 5 - Pt. 1

Summary

Podcast Summary: Better Offline CES 2025: Day 5 - Pt. 1

Release Date: January 10, 2025

Hosts and Guests:

• Ed Zitron: Host and tech industry veteran
• Edward Ongueso Jr.: Correspondent
• Sherlyn Lowe: Deputy Editor at Engadget
• David J. Roth: Guest
• Bobby Bones: Guest

---

1. Introduction and Setting the Stage ([03:22] - [04:28])

Ed Zitron opens the episode by welcoming listeners to day five of the Better Offline consumer electronics show coverage at CES 2025. He introduces his guests:

• Edward Ongueso Jr.: Correspondent
• Sherlyn Lowe: Deputy Editor at Engadget
• David J. Roth and Bobby Bones: Additional guests

Ed shares his personal well-being and expresses excitement about the show, despite it being the final day.

Notable Quote:

"I am well slept. I ate two meals yesterday. My feet feel great. I look fantastic." – Ed Zitron ([03:22])

---

2. First Impressions of CES 2025 ([04:39] - [07:58])

Sherlyn Lowe discusses her experience at CES, noting it's her ninth or eighth time attending, making her relatively new compared to veterans who've been for 25 years. She highlights the smooth running of the current show, contrasting it with past editions where technical glitches occurred, such as simultaneous power outages.

Notable Quotes:

"I've been here when there was the rain and the snow. And then one year, everything. All the power went out in all of the booths at the same time." – Sherlyn Lowe ([06:04])

Ed and Sherlyn reflect on Las Vegas's adaptation to hosting CES, especially concerning construction and traffic management.

---

3. Sex Tech at CES: Innovations and Challenges ([08:03] - [16:20])

The conversation shifts to the presence of sex technology at CES. Sherlyn explains the reluctance of major tech media to cover women's sex tech products, citing instances where companies like Laura De Carlo and Lioness faced gatekeeping from CES organizers, preventing them from showcasing innovations focused on women's sexual health and empowerment.

Notable Quotes:

"The CTA was gatekeeping some of this. Or it was, like, not open to because it was squeamish." – Sherlyn Lowe ([11:23])

Dan Aykroyd discusses the societal reluctance, especially among men, to openly discuss and engage with sexual wellness products, emphasizing the need for more honest conversations about sex.

Notable Quotes:

"Sex is something we do in a dark room and we hide from it, despite men also craving it." – Dan Aykroyd ([12:55])

The panel advocates for embracing sex tech as a means to enhance personal well-being and intimacy, challenging the stigma surrounding it.

---

4. Robotics and Practical Tech Innovations ([16:20] - [24:54])

Sherlyn Lowe highlights the trend of practical robotics showcased at CES, such as robot vacuums with integrated arms by companies like Roborock and Dreamy. These advancements aim to overcome common obstacles like socks or toothbrushes left on the floor.

Notable Quotes:

"Roborock builds a robotic arm into its disc of Robovac. The arm can come up and detect obstacles, pick them up, and place them aside." – Sherlyn Lowe ([18:37])

The discussion moves to emotional support robots, with Sherlyn describing cost-effective models designed to provide companionship without the maintenance required by living pets.

Notable Quotes:

"We like them because they're cute... They can do their own thing, but not poop." – Sherlyn Lowe ([21:56])

The panel appreciates these robots for their clear use cases, contrasting them with more abstract or overhyped tech solutions.

---

5. Accessibility and Assistive Technologies ([24:54] - [38:44])

The conversation delves into accessibility tech, particularly innovations aimed at aiding those with mobility issues. Sherlyn showcases products like smart canes for the visually impaired and exoskeleton-powered pants designed to assist with movements, especially beneficial for individuals with knee pain or other mobility challenges.

Notable Quotes:

"The Arcturix powered pants are like an exoskeleton to help you move and climb better." – Sherlyn Lowe ([61:03])

Ed Zitron expresses enthusiasm for these technologies, recognizing their potential to significantly improve quality of life despite their high costs.

Notable Quotes:

"Putting on a suit that makes you able-bodied... is kind of cool." – Ed Zitron ([63:59])

The panel discusses the financial barriers to widespread adoption, noting that while such technologies are groundbreaking, their high price points limit accessibility.

---

6. Challenges in Tech Media Coverage ([38:44] - [55:43])

Sherlyn Lowe explains Engadget's meticulous process for covering CES, which involves extensive pre-show research and assigning experts to specific tech categories. This structured approach aims to ensure comprehensive and informed coverage amidst the vast array of products and innovations presented at CES.

Notable Quotes:

"We start the process the second we get the full exhibitor list... We find out what they do, reach out, and research their offerings." – Sherlyn Lowe ([45:11])

Dan Aykroyd critiques the superficial coverage often seen in tech media, arguing that shows like CES require a deeper understanding and more rigorous journalism to truly evaluate the products' worth and impact.

Notable Quotes:

"It's easy to just turn up and look for the big companies, but there's a refined process behind the scenes." – Dan Aykroyd ([47:27])

The discussion emphasizes the importance of distinguishing between genuinely innovative products and mere showpieces or clones lacking real utility.

---

7. Regulatory Issues: Lasers and Safety Standards ([55:43] - [100:06])

The episode shifts focus to regulatory challenges, particularly concerning consumer products that incorporate lasers. Phil Broughton, a health physicist and laser safety officer, explains the stringent FDA regulations governing laser products, emphasizing the risks of improper use and the importance of compliance with safety standards.

Notable Quotes:

"Every consumer product that incorporates a laser is supposed to have been vetted and compliant with a federal laser product performance standard." – Phil Broughton ([86:01])

The panel discusses instances of non-compliant products at CES, such as laser-enhanced consumer goods (e.g., laser bras and bongs), highlighting the dangers they pose, including potential blindness and the creation of harmful carcinogens due to incomplete combustion.

Notable Quotes:

"The moment you add a laser to a product without proper safety measures, you become a laser manufacturer." – Phil Broughton ([84:08])

Dan Aykroyd expresses concern over the proliferation of unsafe laser products, underscoring the necessity for stricter enforcement and better consumer awareness.

Notable Quotes:

"Why do they use lasers so much if they can just use LED light sources?" – Dan Aykroyd ([93:01])

The discussion highlights the gap between innovation and safety, advocating for responsible product development and robust regulatory oversight to prevent consumer harm.

---

8. Final Thoughts and Closing Remarks ([100:06] - [113:42])

As the episode nears its conclusion, the hosts reflect on the day's discussions, emphasizing the need for meaningful technological advancements that genuinely enhance human life. They express frustration over products that prioritize trendiness over practicality and stress the importance of regulatory compliance to ensure consumer safety.

Notable Quotes:

"When it gets worse, it's when people interfere with that process." – Dan Aykroyd ([65:12])

Ed Zitron and his guests reiterate their commitment to providing insightful and critical analysis of tech industry trends, encouraging listeners to engage with responsible and beneficial technologies.

Notable Quotes:

"This is what makes technology actually magical—stuff that makes you stronger, connects you with people honestly." – Dan Aykroyd ([64:50])

The episode concludes with acknowledgments to contributors, information on how listeners can connect with the hosts, and a brief mention of upcoming content.

---

Conclusion

"Better Offline CES 2025: Day 5 - Pt. 1" offers an in-depth exploration of the latest consumer electronics showcased at CES 2025. Through thoughtful discussions, the panel critically examines innovations in sex tech, robotics, accessibility, and regulatory compliance, highlighting both groundbreaking advancements and the challenges they present. The episode underscores the importance of responsible innovation, thorough media coverage, and stringent safety standards to ensure that technological progress benefits society without compromising safety or ethics.

Key Takeaways:

• Sex Tech: Despite stigma, significant advancements are being made to enhance women's sexual health and empowerment, though gatekeeping remains a barrier.
• Robotics: Practical robots with clear use cases, such as assistive vacuums and emotional support companions, are valuable additions to the tech landscape.
• Accessibility: High-tech solutions like smart canes and exoskeletons offer transformative potential for individuals with mobility challenges, though cost remains a significant hurdle.
• Regulatory Compliance: Ensuring consumer safety, especially in products involving lasers, requires rigorous adherence to standards and proactive oversight by both manufacturers and regulatory bodies.

---

Links and Resources:

• Better Offline Website: betteroffline.com
• Sherlyn Lowe's Contact: engadget.com
• Phil Broughton's Blog: funraniumlabs.com

---

This summary captures the essence of the discussion from Better Offline’s CES 2025 coverage, providing listeners with a comprehensive overview of the key topics and insights shared during the episode.

Transcript

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[Oz Veloson]

Do you want to see into the future? Do you want to understand an invisible force that's shaping your life? Do you want to experience the frontiers of what makes us human? On tech stuff, we travel from the mines of Congo to the surface of Mars, from conversations with Nobel Prize winners to the depths of TikTok to ask burning questions about technology, from high tech to low culture and everywhere in between. Join us Listen to tech stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Alec Baldwin]

Hey, it's Alec Baldwin. This past season on my podcast, here's the Thing, I spoke with more actors, musicians, policymakers and so many other fascinating people like writer and actor Dan Aykroyd.

[Dan Aykroyd]

I love writing more than anything. You're left alone. You know, you do three hours in the morning, you write three hours in the afternoon.

[Alec Baldwin]

Go pick up a kid from school.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Then write at night and after nine.

[Alec Baldwin]

Hours you come out with seven pages.

[Dan Aykroyd]

And then you're moving on.

[Alec Baldwin]

Listen to here's the thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you.

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Get your podcasts, you are cordially invited to the hottest party in professional sports. I'm Tisha Allen, former golf professional and the host of welcome to the Party, your newest obsession about the wonderful world that is women's golf. Featuring interviews with top players on tour, tips to help improve your swing, and and the craziest stories to come out of your friendly neighborhood country club. Welcome to the Party with Tisha Allen is an iHeart woman's fourth production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment. Listen to welcome to the Party that's P A R T E e on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Bobby Bones]

Calling all Yellowstone fans, let's Go to work. Join Bobby Bones on the official Yellowstone podcast for exclusive cast inter behind the scenes insights and a deep dive into the themes that have made Yellowstone a cultural phenomenon.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Dark family legacy news this ranch.

[Dan Aykroyd]

My protector.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Live my life.

[Bobby Bones]

Listen to the official Yellowstone podcast Now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or.

[Alec Baldwin]

Wherever you get your podcasts.

[Bobby Bones]

Call Zone Media.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Hello and welcome to day five of the better offline consumer electronics show saga. I'm your host, Ed Z. Tr. I am well slept. I ate two meals yesterday. My feet feel great. I look fantastic. I'm having a hell of a show, but it's the last day, sadly, but only the last day of the show. We have today, and then we have tomorrow. Kind of a positive masculinity day. We're getting. We're getting massages, we're having brunch. We're gonna have a wonderful podcast. Gonna talk about our feelings. It's gonna be amazing. But today we have an incredible cast with us. To my left is Edward Ongueso Jr. My wonderful correspondent.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Hello. How's everyone doing?

[Dan Aykroyd]

I'm great, as I just said. Clearly was thinking of something else. But over to my right, I have the wonderful Sherlyn Lowe, the deputy editor at Engadget. Sherlyn, thank you so much for joining us.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Thank you for having me.

[Dan Aykroyd]

And to my right, David J. Roth. How are you doing, David?

[Bobby Bones]

I'm good. How are you? Oh, wait, no, you already said.

[Dan Aykroyd]

There we are.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

I'm the only one that didn't ask.

[Bobby Bones]

Yeah, well, you were paying attention.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

I wanted to know how everyone was doing.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Oh, okay. Well, didn't ask, though, anyway, until now. Sherlyn.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yes.

[Dan Aykroyd]

So how many CES is this for you?

[Sherlyn Lowe]

I've. Well, few. Enough that I'm not as seasoned as people who have done this 25 years, but I think I'm under 10. I think I'm nine or eight.

[Dan Aykroyd]

That's still a lot.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yeah.

[Bobby Bones]

Yeah. That sort of still seems high to me. This is my first and Edward's first.

[Phil Broughton]

Oh.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

How does it feel?

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Surreal.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Oh, yeah?

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Yeah.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Is it everything you expected?

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

And more I want to know about.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

And more I want to know about. AN Moore.

[Bobby Bones]

Most of what I got in terms of expectation setting was from Ed, and it was like I kind of expected it to suck more than it does.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Okay.

[Bobby Bones]

Like, because he was more or less, you know, trying to get me. I don't know if it was just. That's how you.

[Dan Aykroyd]

I was just motivated.

[Bobby Bones]

Like, you have no idea how depraved it is. Like, you're going to see things down there, and it's like, that's. It's a trade show. Like, I mean, it still kind of stinks, but there's. It was more normal for the most part, which made the stuff that was, like, ridiculous and dystopian pop that much harder for me. I enjoyed it pretty well.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

I wish you were more depraved. I'm sorry to go on.

[Bobby Bones]

Was there a version of it that was. I feel like it.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Okay. This CVS is, like, surprisingly. I feel like Las Vegas as a city has figured a lot of its shit out. Can I swear?

[Bobby Bones]

Yes.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Oh, Christ.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Great.

[Bobby Bones]

Don't do all the swears.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Oh, okay. Just something. All right. Low level. Okay.

[Bobby Bones]

You can do the brown word. You can say damn, but not. You know, but no.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

All right. No C words. No.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Yeah, I think that's the one.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yeah. Okay. Gotcha. So, Chicken.

[Bobby Bones]

So what do you. How do you mean that, like, Vegas has, like, assimilated this?

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yeah. So, I mean, you can see all the construction happening, but they've managed to make it so the construction is not impeding a lot of the getting around, which they have done in previous years. The traffic, I'm sure, you know, has been.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Living here and being at CES is like a double punishment.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Oh, God. I don't know why you chose to do that to yourself, but you did choose to do this. I make many decisions. The west hall is beautiful. The. The fact that the weather is extremely beautiful this week makes everyone feel better when they're outside. I've been here when there was the rain and the snow. And then one year, everything. All the power went out in all of the booths at the same time. And I was on stage doing, like, a panel, hosting a panel, interviewing Sony's head of hardware or something. And we were, like, vamping on stage for a minute there while the power came back on. So there's been, like, CES past where things haven't been as nice, or, to me, this has been nicely run and fairly smooth.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Yeah. The one thing I will say that worries me about Las Vegas is for, like, a solid decade, we lost the flappy guys, the guys who have the cards that they flip together to offer escorts. Those guys disappeared for a long time. But for the first time since, like, 2014, I would say they're back. There's not many of them. They just kind of like.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

I saw them when I was last here.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Really?

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

When I saw you the first time that we met. Yeah. But they were, like, outside of the insurance convention that Jason had Been.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

The right place to be. Yeah.

[Bobby Bones]

So maybe they're just, like, looking at the people that are going to CES and are like, this is not an escort crowd.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Yeah. They just. They have a meeting beforehand and they have, like, an Excel spreadsheet they all work through and like, well, really, the.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Odds are, let's make it happen during AVN again.

[Dan Aykroyd]

That's. No, no, no, no, no.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Maybe they're. Maybe they're like, these guys can build their own escorts, you know, like the robots that we saw this year. Oh, my goodness.

[Bobby Bones]

Yeah.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Yeah. There is a tame hunter. Washington Post had an article about that where it was like, the conversation with the guys about that, and everyone's just like, I don't. I don't know, man. Like, it's just. I'll link to it in the. In the thing. But I do think the tech industry reporters do kind of need to look at AVM more and kind of broaden out from this stuff, because as much. And I do apologize to female listeners who feels like we said. Who said stuff about being gross a few times on this, but I will say, sex, perversion, all that is a part of society and one can be puritanical about it. But that area needs more coverage. And we've kind of talked about seeing the various dildonics manufacturers around here.

[Bobby Bones]

Sounds better when you use the technical term Dildonics. Advanced dildonic.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

It's a lot more consonants than you'd expect.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Right. Plain dildonics. But I feel like that is a weirdly left out jet age, I think.

[Bobby Bones]

Suffix.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

I can't speak for all of the tech media, but for Engadget, it's like, we gotta prioritize. CES is such a huge show. We've got the cars, the drones, the robots. We do cover sex tech. Like, this year there was the Motor Bunny. Or Motor Fluffy.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Fluffy.

[Bobby Bones]

Motor Bunny powered or. No, Something powered by Fluffer. I have it written down.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yeah. Thank you.

[Bobby Bones]

That was when I was awesome.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yeah.

[Bobby Bones]

That was why I went back down to the floor for what I'm writing. It is.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Yeah.

[Bobby Bones]

Motor Bunny powered by Fluffy.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Thank you.

[Bobby Bones]

And then there's another. Low vents is the one that's across from it. That was the one where they actually, like.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yeah.

[Bobby Bones]

I was there with a guy who's like a producer for other podcasts, like friends of ours that were also here and has, like, it's sort of like a running gag in those podcasts that this guy's life is just completely feral and, like, he doesn't know how to take care of Himself and I saw him blush while getting just instructions on how this thing syncs with that at the Levents thing. I didn't go to the motorbuddy powered by fluffer bit just because.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Do you know the news there though?

[Bobby Bones]

No.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

They're making, I believe, a dildonic that's powered by game controllers.

[Bobby Bones]

Is that what it was? I thought there was a game. The game is called Fappy Bunny.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Yeah. Fappy Bunny Bunny. Yeah.

[Dan Aykroyd]

So good.

[Bobby Bones]

But it's the sort of thing like you. There's a limit. No one expects me to do really rigorous journalism. I'm a sports writer and I'm here cause there's a fold out bed and everything. Because I enjoy hanging out with my friends.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Also for the podcast.

[Bobby Bones]

Yeah, also for the podcast. But the idea of like having to look someone in the face while he says like Fappy Bunny to me, like just like it's a normal thing to say to a guy, I think.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Do you think it's odd because you're both men may presumably CIS hetero men in the space. Same space. Because I covered this from the woman's angle to your point that like in tech, especially a space that's not predominantly like friendly to women, you know. You know, the CTA has been notorious for not wanting to showcase sex tag for women.

[Dan Aykroyd]

And has that been a consistent theme?

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yeah. So I mean, since the big hoo ha. I think, what, four or five years ago, Laura De Carlo really went out and said like, why are they not allowing us. They rescinded our innovation award. They made a smart vibrator, I believe, and were granted an innovation award in sort of the health category and then had it rescinded like weeks before the show started. I can't remember how many years ago this was. Yeah. And they like didn't let them display at the actual show floor area. I remember even before Laura DeCarlo did all of that, I was covering.

[Dan Aykroyd]

And who is Laura DeCarlo?

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Just.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

I'm sorry. Laura De Carlo is a sex tech company that made a smart vibrator with a focus on women and women's sexual health and empowerment. I interviewed them for a piece back then and I haven't kept in touch as much. And so I've completely forgotten. Like my brain's ram has run out. Right. But I remember very well another brand Lioness who makes also a smart vibrating dildo. And they had to like show at an off site, sort of non official, non sanctioned CES event in Vegas that they have made orgasm art. So they have a smart vibrator with sensors in it. Right. And it would, like, tell you when you've had an orgasm based on the.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Vibrations that actually feels like. That might be very useful.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

It is actually useful because the pitch back then. And you know, men, when you have erectile dysfunction, for example, it could be an indicator that something's wrong with your heart health. It could be something that's wrong somewhere else in your body. It's like a check engine light.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Right.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

And for women, it could be similar. Like, we don't have enough data. And that was step one on collecting the data. So the. The Lioness Smart vibrator was very impressive to the point where, like, on the Engadget team, like, we. We gave it, like, one of the. It was a nominee for an award in the health category that year that we were awarding the CTA's Best of CES awards. And it is. It does. Like, to your point, Ed, we were just talking before the podcast started that we need people in this space who are, like, aware and familiar, and the CTA was gatekeeping some of this. Or it was, like, not open to. Because it was squeamish. I get it makes people squeamish to be like, you put this inside you.

[Bobby Bones]

Yeah.

[Dan Aykroyd]

But I think that you raised something with David. Men in general do not discuss sex.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Thank you.

[Dan Aykroyd]

And men have a very hard time talking about, like, arousal. They talk about lust. They're very good at discussing, like, the joke and all that. Like, it's almost like, oh, sex is something we do in a dark room and we hide from it, despite men also craving it. So the discussion with men about sexual is actually quite rare. I only have to. I've never talked about having sex with you guys. Not literally doing it, but also having had sex in general, which is the one rule we have here. Does not happen at ces. That's a choice. But nevertheless, it's like, men don't have these discussions about sex in general. So the idea of a man being able to go up to. And it's a challenge, especially if it's outside of your coverage, to go up and be like, hey, so how do you use this without being like. But also not feeling a little vulnerable? Because with men, especially with sex toys, at least in my experience of discussing with them, they're scared of the idea of using it with a partner, like, male or female. The idea is it's like giving up. Even though from my experience, whatever gets the job done, women tend to be pretty happy. But even then, even saying this out loud, I'm like, yeah, this is the conversation I wouldn't have with guys in general.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yeah. Yeah. I think we should be talking more and more about it. Like, I just from you bringing that up, I was like, zed. I was like, oh, yeah, men probably don't even talk because I have for a large chunk of my life been like, we need to talk more about sex just amongst women. I think we need to talk about what gets you off, what an orgasm feels like. Like, what is all this stuff? Because there's people that are not having it and that's just depressing. It's like they're like, I don't know what that's get me off or not, but have I had a no or not? Like, it's.

[Dan Aykroyd]

And there's joy in it. There is so much finding that and the intimacy you can have with someone with having a detailed, meaningful conversation about what gets you both off. It's something you can work.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

And you need to talk to your partner about it. What are you going to do or talk to yourself about it? Figure yourself out and then talk to your partner or partners or whatever you want to do with people about it. Like, you should be experiencing joy in every. And I get that as we're talking about this, people are already feeling squeamish. Like, I'm sure listeners are like uncomfortable with the topic. It's. It's not.

[Bobby Bones]

I want to know how we're going to integrate AI and all this.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Right.

[Bobby Bones]

Listeners are demanding.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Did she try to over correct. Because I feel like when I looked at the Innovation Awards when I first. Not overcorrect, but have they tried. Have there's. Has their response been like, oh, we don't want that backlash or, oh, we are like changing our mind about it. I, Because I, because I didn't realize that they had given an Innovation Award and removed it. They had an Innovation Award to a vibrator, to a smart, I think dolphin or, you know, vibrator toy in general. But that was the only one that I saw. And most of it I'm curious about whether it's like, okay, since that, since they had this scandal, they're like, okay, we'll just do a sort of small carve out and that will be enough as a sort of superficial move. But we're not actually going to talk about it. Change attitudes about it.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Integrated more kind of like lip service. Kind of like just giving you your, here, have that, have this. And like, don't bother us anymore.

[Dan Aykroyd]

So I think it's like thematically relevant as well, because There's a real irony about it, because the reason they're probably not putting it front and center is they're like, I was just giving into iniquity. Oh, these people just be talking about sex. So instead you do the thing that's well known with sex that you should do, which is repression.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yeah.

[Dan Aykroyd]

When you just hide it all versus and you talk about people being uncomfortable talking about this. We're not talking about the actual acts of it.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

No.

[Dan Aykroyd]

But also, there is joy and happiness within this. In the same way that not real problems are being solved all the time here, sex toys are actually solving them.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

I know beyond the.

[Bobby Bones]

And I can't speak to how squeamish or not squeamish CES is, because I don't know very much about it, but it feels like this is a dynamic that we've kept coming back to in these, which is, like, this is a product that solves, like, a problem that people experience. It's like, a thing that, like, enhances your life in some way. And it feels like much of. For me, I guess, like, the balance of the stuff that you see here is not that it is either. Like, it's doodad stuff to a certain extent, but then also there's this, like, pie in the sky shit about, like, it's a house that, like, empathizes with you and helps and helps you pick out your, you know, clothing for the week. Yeah.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Right.

[Bobby Bones]

Yeah. Whereas in this case, it's, like, the stuff that I was impressed with down there was stuff that was basically, like, that felt like an invention. It felt like an invention that had become a product that could then be, like, marketed and sold. And it doesn't. I don't know to what extent. And this is something people that have been to more cess than me could speak on. Like, has the. Was there a time when it was more of a. Like, a place that sold products, or has it always been a place where, like, LG promises to fix your life?

[Sherlyn Lowe]

I can't speak for, like, more than 10 years past, but, yeah, yeah. I guess I mentioned this recently. Like, it started as feeling like the home entertainment LG show, along with some, like, laptops and Harry pots sprinkled around. Right.

[Bobby Bones]

But I gather there was an auto show era.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yeah, there was one year where it was the car show, and then now it is the AI show. But then you still have, like. I think south hall has always been filled with, like, gadgets that feel like doodads from, like, other parts of the world. And then I think as CTA continues to expand its space and its scope. You've got more and more of like people feeling like they can pay $5,000, get a table, come here and show their can. Like, what's that term for something that does something too? Like there's a term for it. Like the. Like something that does something that some other brand does anyway.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Copycat.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Like a clone?

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Pretty much like. Yeah, exactly. So anyway, clone substitutes, like dupes of like. Oh, my gosh, I saw so many Dyson hair dryer dupes this year.

[Dan Aykroyd]

You know, I saw so many different kinds of the same battery pack.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Thank you.

[Phil Broughton]

Yeah.

[Dan Aykroyd]

I also love battery packs, so I can't.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

I saw so many smart rings. I saw so many. You know, it's one year there was massage chairs everywhere, and now it's like their Transformer massage chairs everywhere. It's. It is to an extent always that kind of show.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Somewhat pivot here, but one of piece of Engadget's coverage was about these new vacuums, the robot vacuums with the arms. Can you walk me through what the hell that is?

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yeah, I mean, you had Karissa on your show recently. She's covered.

[Dan Aykroyd]

I know, and I thought you covered it. I have Carissa Bell.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

It's all good. Yeah.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Being very unfair to Ms. Bell.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yeah, no, she.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Tell me about this.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

So it started with roborock. I'm gonna paint a tale for you here. Roborock is one of the most well known names in the Robovac space. And you know those spinning robo robot vacuums that go and clean your floors for you? The innovation in them has in the past or in recent years been like, combining the vacuum and mopping features. Now they're like, how else do we innovate? Well, roborock builds a robotic arm into its disc of Robovac. And the arm can come up and it has obviously sensors and stuff like that that can detect obstacles in front of it and be like, oh, this is sock I need. Like, in the past, the robot vacuum would get tripped up and maybe not, you know, continue to. Right. Or go somewhere else. And now if it can pick up the sock that's in its way, or toothbrush or a hairbrush or whatever's in this way. It can put it away and then continue to clean the path that it was on or, you know, put it somewhere else. So somehow everyone was like, hell, yes. This is the thing that I wanted all my life. Which makes sense. This is a real world application of.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Something that work, though.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Well, in the limited demo. Yes. Right. Like it did work. It's. It did seem to go up to a sock. Pick it up and put it in the laundry basket.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Pick up objects up to 300 grams. A little more than half a pound.

[Phil Broughton]

Yeah.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

So roborock's vacuum only has that weight limit. And then, and then the funny thing is with ce, as we were just talking about this, every other robovac company was like, we also have arms. Here we go. Dreamy, for example, was supposed to only debut its like stair climbing robot, which also is another obstacle in these homes. Decided to show off its arm, but it's a more solid looking clamp situation that seems to be able to handle like way more weight. So. Yeah, exactly. I'm like, good for you. You go to the gym.

[Dan Aykroyd]

But you know, I love my yoked out vacuum.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

I don't know what you would call that. The Transformer of vacuums. The Optimus Prima vacuums, maybe. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, look, it's nice to see these companies innovate and then copy the heck out of each other.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Yeah, but that's ces.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

That is Cesar. Yeah, it's always a theme.

[Bobby Bones]

Has like a, you know, it's sort of reassuringly concrete relative to some of the areas. Not only can you see what problem they're aiming to solve, but you can like sort of watch the process of competition playing out in terms of that. Whereas the thing that I felt and you were, you saw like actual crypto guys talking today, like the maximum amount of abstraction allowable in the language where you're just kind of like, I don't even understand what you're. What you're fixing for me here beyond like a comprehensive reimagining of my life that removes any personal agency and replaces it with your proprietary algorithms or whatever.

[Dan Aykroyd]

So on the subject of robots though, what else have you seen?

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yeah, a lot of the robots we saw and liked anyway, we did a roundup at Engadget. Mostly were these like cute emotional support robots.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Like everyone's talking about these and I've been mocking them, but it seems that everyone actually likes them.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

We like them because they're cute, right? And they're like, some of them are like 80 bucks. It's like 80 bucks. Yeah. Why not? Like I would get. I'm a person who has some form of self diagnosed ocd, which is I don't like pets because they mess up my place. Right. And so I still want the warmth and tender love of a cute little furry creature that can do its own thing, but not poop. And the idea of a Furry robot that has warmth that can simulate.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Oh, so it generates warmth.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

One of them does. So the. Not the Ukai engineering. The rope hat. The rope hat does generate warmth. And so it's sort of feels comforting. Right. When you have it on you. The other one that we saw is the Ukai engineering's Mirumi. It's something that stares at you.

[Bobby Bones]

Yeah, that was one that cursed me.

[Dan Aykroyd]

I really don't. I have not seen this thing yet. But the idea of something staring at me really freaks me.

[Bobby Bones]

She seemed into it though.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Like, I don't know. I think it's a character personality type thing.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

The tombot that we saw, you know, there's a dog for people with dementia that, I mean, at first glance also did feel and look like a dog. Right. And it's kind of just programmed where it's like, you know, maybe you would. You would benefit from having the companionship, but you're. The dementia is too progressed for you to be able to take care of.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

See, that's a really good use case.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Do you talk to them at all? Because the only question I have there is if they're. If in the latter stages and experiences I've had mostly through friends is wouldn't they forget about it? Would it not be jarring? But I honestly, I really am rooting for them because that sounds lovely. That sounds like something that actually solves a problem of you can't really do contiguous care when you yourself are kind of out of sync with the world due to your condition. See, this is the thing. As we roll to the end of this show, it is nice to have a conversation where it's not entirely just, yeah, I don't know what a con man and another con man were conning each other in front of me.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

It's just Vegas.

[Bobby Bones]

No, but exactly, yeah, there is that feeling of. That's like the bit of it that has. When I felt overwhelmed by this, beyond the volume, like the physical challenge of just like walking for whatever 20 miles over this, there's the sense sometimes of like, you're trying to take in the entire spectrum of like free market fuckery in one bite. You know, like from like the white label cable manufacturers on the bottom of things to the, you know, whatever, like Amazon or like just literal, you know, globe bestriding giants on the other one that it's like you see the plankton and you see the whale sharks and like every single thing in between is like. It's a lot to sort of hold in your head.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yes.

[Bobby Bones]

It makes the. To me at least it makes the actual products that. That seem to have actual use cases feel that much more valuable and welcome because there's, you know, it's like I sort of know what it's about. There's a lot of this stuff that is impossible for me to parse.

[Dan Aykroyd]

So how long have you been here as well? How many days?

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Oh, Yeah, I landed January 4th, Saturday, and today is what, Friday, So. And I'm leaving tomorrow. I have big plans to go explore the desert or something. And I am here, like to go and get on an ATV or something and go like, just. Because today officially everyone's flying home for my team and so. Yeah, not y'all.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

You ever been to a salt lake or salt bed, I guess a salt bed, I think it's, you know, if.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Oh, oh, the flat lake Gaja. No, I haven't.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Go for a hike.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yeah, I want to do that after this. Which is why when you asked me to stay for longer, I was like, ed, not that long.

[Bobby Bones]

I gotta go. I have to go visit a canyon tbd.

[Dan Aykroyd]

I have to do something more interesting.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

I want to be lost in the mountains if you would never hear from me again.

[Dan Aykroyd]

You want to be very lost, Just be me. So, so far, what is your favorite thing you've seen? I say so far as we talk about the end.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yeah, Hard to choose. Can I say what is not the favorite thing I've seen?

[Dan Aykroyd]

Absolutely.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

I've seen this video making the rounds now that I finally had some time to get back on my social media, like binging habits and on Reddit and on a lot of social media platforms. This video of this AI sex robot.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Yeah, the $170,000.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yeah. The one with the dark hair. Dark long hair looking like they're falling off a chair, basically.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Yeah. I really should. When we. We'll hit the break in like eight minutes and I'll show you a picture. But it is really funny because I love that there's always one company that does something like this where they just. Everyone experiences the uncanny valley at once.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yeah.

[Dan Aykroyd]

And they're like. But we got a ton of press out of it, Right? Every article is just like this horrifying thing. A company has made these. These evil people. They talk about them like one of the bad guys from Full Metal Alchemist. Like, they like the monstrosities they have summoned and like, nailed it.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

I saw something that kind of reminded me of this where it was this humanoid robot and it was very loudly, clearly saying, I'm a text based AI, do not have a body that's Fully embodied.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

We saw that, too. Yeah.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

And I was just like, okay, this is a good gimmick, because that only comes up. I stood there for about 10 minutes. That only comes up, like, once every seven minutes for a while. The rest of the time, you can do the little gimmick where you're talking to it and it's speaking and you just don't hear that. It's probably just literally a chatbot speaking out of the speakers. But you finally tuned it. It looks human. Right. And you get a chance to advertise whatever AI platform. Platform that it is that the company was connected to, which is Waze. It's like, wai.

[Dan Aykroyd]

It's a Waze.

[Bobby Bones]

Oh, that's a tough one.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Hey, baby.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

German, how you doing?

[Dan Aykroyd]

Turn left.

[Bobby Bones]

I somehow missed the haul of Uncanny Humanoids, which is like, thank goodness. I mean, still a couple hours left. I guess I could go down.

[Dan Aykroyd]

I saw a robot with, like, a Donald Trump mask on, took a picture, then immediately deleted it. Because I know when someone's trying to get coverage. I know when someone's just being like, Donald Trump.

[Bobby Bones]

Did you sense that was the case with the sex bot? That they were just basically like. I mean, we got mentioned in the Wall Street Journal. They called us the embodiment of everything that's wrong with contemporary culture. You know, like.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yeah, no, I think to your point, the. It's refreshing for me to see the PR angle of this that you're thinking of. And I'm just there like, oh, right, yeah. This is a cheap method to employ. I didn't get that vibe. We didn't even cover it. None of it. Not even on our radars, like.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Yeah, because don't encourage them. But also, back to the earlier theme. It's like a theme, a thing made by someone who is not actually interested in people having sex or meaningful, honest, direct sexual relationships. It's like, what are these ugly pigs that never have sex? 1. Oh, a horrible robot that looks like. Kind of like a woman so they can have their horrible sex in a locked room. Criminalizing sex, treating it like this ugly thing that we should hide from the world, while also kind of making fun of people who aren't that way, making.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Fun of their target audience, which is the irony of that is so strange.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Versus empathy and joy and honesty about sex, which is like, a meaningful thing that people should explore.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

It's part of life.

[Bobby Bones]

Yeah, disagree Is how we got here.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Listen, the Protestants were onto something.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

I love it. We seem to be 50, 50 split on this.

[Bobby Bones]

Pretty normal about it. Before I came to Las Vegas, now I'm taking a hard stance. We gotta get this shit out.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Sex is out in 2025.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Before I came here, I was a freak and I'm leaving with some, some changed models.

[Bobby Bones]

Oh, I'm more of an AI guy.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yeah, I hear about crypto. Apparently you're what, you're a convert now?

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Oh, yeah. I, you know, I think sex should be on the blockchain, I think.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Oh, gosh. Oh God.

[Dan Aykroyd]

You know, someone's done.

[Bobby Bones]

Yeah, I was going to say, like with these unutterable horrors that has now that it's been uttered.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Yeah.

[Bobby Bones]

Who knows what's going on.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Wall Street Journal, C.S. abomination of the.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Yeah, yeah. I'd bet money someone I or friend is making it right now.

[Bobby Bones]

Yeah.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Oh no, they should be making something else. They should. Like getting their affairs in order. When I find. No, that's it. So as we approach the break here, is there anything else you're going to see on the show or are you just done?

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Okay, so I'm here for personal interest. Now last night I was supposed to already be done working, but I went to the Venetian Expo and I saw some like last minute accessibility related products. That's always been like a topic I pay attention to myself. We actually, I'm very proud to say this and gadget's like best of CES winner, like the best in show. Best of all the things we saw was a smart cane for the blind.

[Dan Aykroyd]

So we talked about this and it's good because my worry with it was a, it needs an Internet connection if it's got a GPT thing. But it works.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

It worked. Yeah. And in the busy wife like convention floor where like you assume the WI fi is like clogged as shit. Right. And I did not clarify or verify what type of Internet connection I was using. Was it on device? I bet it's not because it's a very thin, like well made device. Like they folded it up, unfolded it, showed me. I held it in my hand and used it a bit. It seems to work really well.

[Dan Aykroyd]

What's the weight like on it?

[Sherlyn Lowe]

It is slightly heavier than I think your conventional, like folding cane for people who are visually impaired, but not too much heavier. Now to be clear, this is like a second generation of an existing product. The first one was a bit heavier, so they've refined it. They've made the handle a little easier to hold. They replaced like a touchscreen sort of button situation with tactile buttons which should have been in the first one. Right. Like why didn't you think of this? So they are. They have made improvements, continue to and they have a pretty legit legitimate partner in TDK who's like a bigger, more established company to see this through. Look to your point. Zed. Zed, Zed. Ed. That's where I'm going by now. Zed baby, to your point, this thing at least if it dies, if it runs out of battery, it's still just a cane.

[Dan Aykroyd]

This is what Carissa, I believe said about it. It's like it still functions as a device. It's just the wi fi thing is what it's for. Because if the whole thing is a.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Model, well, but it's not entirely like a chatgpt only. I mean the term by navigations is something that is quite important to the concept here and the fact that it will like that it has a speaker on board to answer questions and stuff like that. So those are important things. But it's also got like a flashlight on board, those sorts of things that don't require Internet. Right. For example. So that's something we, you know, should definitely clarify. We have the contact information of people we can get in touch and find out.

[Dan Aykroyd]

We'd love to know.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yeah, I'll find out.

[Dan Aykroyd]

So as we come towards the break Edward on Guayso Journey where can be.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

People find you Newsletter The Tech Bubble substack.com podcast this Machine Kills and then big black Jacobin on Twitter and Blue.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Sky Sherlyn where can people find you?

[Sherlyn Lowe]

It feels like every social media app is closing. So C H R L I N N B Sky Social is the safest one to say and email Cheryl c h r engadget.com or just engadget.com and of course Engadget.

[Dan Aykroyd]

I'll be putting the links to the best the show in the notes. Don't worry Mr. Roth.

[Bobby Bones]

Where can people find defector.com and the.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Distraction podcast and also the It's Christmas Town podcast. I'm Ed Zitron. You can find me everywhere. To add that everywhere you just Google takes biggest nastiest baby and that's what I pop up as now if you were a big nasty baby and you love products because you're way I love I got all this money. I don't know where to put it or I don't know a podcast where yeah then just follow the ads. After this you'll have something.

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[Paola Pedrosa]

Have you ever looked into the night sky and wondered who or what was flying around up there? We've seen planes, helicopters, hot air balloons, and birds. But what if there's something else, something much more ominous that appears under the COVID of night, Silent, unseen, watching? They may be right above your car late one night as you cruise down the road, or look like mysterious lights hovering above your home. Drones? Or are they?

[Alec Baldwin]

We used the word drone because it.

[Phil Broughton]

Was comfortable to other people.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

One minute was there and one minute it wasn't. Oh, that is beyond creepy. Do you feel like this drone was targeting you specifically?

[Phil Broughton]

Yes, absolutely.

[Paola Pedrosa]

Listen to Obscurum Invasion of the Drones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Oz Veloson]

Do you want to understand an invisible force that's shaping your life? I'm Os Veloson, one of the new hosts of the long running podcast Tech Stuff. I'm slightly skeptical, but obsessively intrigued.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

And I'm Cara Price, the other new host, and I'm ready to adopt early.

[Oz Veloson]

And often on Tech Stuff. We travel all the way from the mines of Congo to the surface of Mars to the dark corners of TikTok to ask and attempt to answer burning questions about technology.

[Dan Aykroyd]

One of the kind of tricks for surviving Mars is to live there long enough so that people evolve into Martians.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Like data is a very rough proxy for a complex reality.

[Dan Aykroyd]

How is it possible that the world's new energy revolution can be based in this place where there's no electricity at night?

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Oz and I will cut through the noise to bring you the best conversations and deep dives that will help you understand how tech is changing our world and what you need to know to survive the singularity. So join us.

[Oz Veloson]

Listen to Tech stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Alec Baldwin]

How serious is youth vaping? Irreversible lung damage serious 1 in 10 kids vape serious, which warrants a serious conversation from a serious parental figure like yourself. Not the seriously, know it all sports dad or the seriously smart podcaster. It requires a serious conversation that is best had by you. No, seriously, the best person to talk to your child about vaping is you. To start the conversation, visit talkaboutvaping.org brought to you by the American Lung association and the AD Council.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Welcome.

[Indeed Advertiser]

My name is Paola Pedrosa, a medium.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

And the host of the Ghost Therapy podcast, where it's not just about connecting with deceased loved ones. It's about learning through them and their new perspective.

[Indeed Advertiser]

Join me on the Ghost Therapy podcast.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Whoa. My lights in my living room just flickered.

[Phil Broughton]

I'm a little nervous.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

I'm excited. I'm excited nervous. You know, I'm a very spiritual person, so I'm like, I'm ready and open. That was amazing. I feel so grateful right now. I got to speak to my great grandmother Abuela, and she gave me a lot of really good advice that I'm gonna have to really think about. Wow. Okay. That's crazy. Yes, that is accurate.

[Indeed Advertiser]

Listen to the Ghost Therapy podcast as part of the My Cultura Podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Dan Aykroyd]

And we're back. So, Sherlyn, Sherlyn, we talked just before this about this infrared mask. Now, I say this for both personal and professional reasons. What was this? And why does. What does the infrared mask thing do?

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Okay, so it's not just infrared. This is Shark's Cryoglow, and It debuted at CES 2025. It is the latest in a string of, like, full face light based mask devices. You've probably. Maybe you've heard of their faces.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Oh, no. I'm gonna be completely honest. I've been targeted with these things, these masks you put on that kind of do something to you and just been so. Because I have, like, gaunt eyes, I look like I'm Polish. British. It's not.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

You're too mean to yourself. But go on.

[Dan Aykroyd]

I am, but that's part of the show. But for real, though, though, what do these things actually, why do you use them as a person?

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Okay, so red light therapy, when used with effective components, is supposed to help like anti aging, help reduce fine lines or signs of anti aging. Signs of aging. Fine lines, wrinkles. The blue light is supposed to help with antibacterial, so it's good for acne. Purportedly, infrared is helping with some level of rejuvenation under the skin as well as penetrating the layers of the skin. I know this is because of the facials that I take and I include the light therapy.

[Dan Aykroyd]

And do they actually.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

I feel like they work. Go for the like, salon grade one. So that's like probably going to work better than any of these home treatments. I've been very skeptical of devices like the Solawave, which is a smaller wand with smaller components. The LED bulbs don't seem as.

[Dan Aykroyd]

And as a note, Phil, our bartender, who is a laser safety specialist, is currently. He's just got his head in his hands, so. Sherlyn, please keep talking though.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yeah, I'm not sure how effective. Right. Like, it's so hard to tell with these things. Like when you have to use them for six months to like, see any results.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Phil is now walking away. Oh, no, no, don't worry. He doesn't deserve.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Oh, no, I don't. I mean, I don't think they're completely unsafe or useless. Right.

[Dan Aykroyd]

He's not saying that. He's just going. He would come over and say something about how lasers were good. Just. Sorry. Phil, come over. Why are you complaining? Grab a chair. Grab a chair. Ed, please share your microphone with him so he can have his party.

[Phil Broughton]

I wasn't complaining.

[Dan Aykroyd]

You had your head in your hands, sir.

[Phil Broughton]

Yes.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Now he's taking a knee because he hadn't.

[Phil Broughton]

Actually. No. This is just when I. I once again would like to take a moment to really give thanks to the deeply overworked, put upon and underfunded folks at the Food and Drug Administration. Specifically for the center for Device and Radiologic Health.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yeah, I agree.

[Phil Broughton]

For whom none of these products ever get to them, nor do they get approved.

[Bobby Bones]

Are there not like home. I feel like there have to be home versions of this stuff out there.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Yeah. And that's kind of what we're looking at.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

There are. Yes, exactly.

[Dan Aykroyd]

And what did the cryo one do?

[Sherlyn Lowe]

So the cryo part of it were these two metallic plates under the eye and they were just cold and it was so comfortable. That felt.

[Dan Aykroyd]

And that's very useful for skin.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Exactly, exactly.

[Phil Broughton]

The important thing that having had products like this come through where I work at exceptional expense because they have successfully managed to sell them to NFL teams. I've had to stop people from spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for. You have gotten an IR hot red light therapy unit. What it's doing is providing heat. How is that different than the hot lamp at McDonald's? That's considerably cheaper. Or alternatively, the thing we have literally been using since time Immemorial hot water bottles now in a face mask form. It's to get it where it needs to be. That is valuable. Putting an IR diode in it is not.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Okay, so nothing wrong with the face mask then?

[Phil Broughton]

No, other than do not sell this as a medical product. Do not.

[Dan Aykroyd]

No one does that.

[Phil Broughton]

Don't try to make a claim. Do not allude to a claim, which many people are. Want to do fine to let you make that assumption for them.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yeah.

[Phil Broughton]

And if they're feeling really good, they'll actually put a disclaimer on their product. So I don't have to report them to the fda.

[Dan Aykroyd]

No, no, no. You need to do that. I have some Sotool as well, please.

[Phil Broughton]

Absolutely. Bartender. Coming up.

[Dan Aykroyd]

So this mask. So you have the cold bit. So is that to help with eye bags, I'm assuming?

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just to help with like. Yeah, exactly. Tightening the skin back up or just, you know, feeling fresher when you've had a rough night.

[Dan Aykroyd]

And so the, the heat. And you use these.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

So I've used it for like a minute, so don't.

[Dan Aykroyd]

But you've used the masks in general, though?

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Oh, no, the other two. No, actually.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Well, I mean, just the infrared masks in general.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

I have used the salon grade ones, not the app.

[Dan Aykroyd]

And what do they do? Like, it's just the heat kind of.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yeah, you're supposed to put them on your face and then turn on like a 4 minute, 8 minute, 6 minute session and then. Yeah. Though the. Not heat necessarily. The IR ones do have heat. The red light therapy just shines the light on you. There's the blue light, depending on which treatment you selected. And the cold from, for me was the only thing I could really walk away from the experience having felt good. Though it sounded. It was so good. I was very pleased with it. I will tell you, I have come around on these devices. I used to be hugely skeptical because I always thought they were ineffective. Like, how can you get a tiny light bulb to do anything? And two, the same point we're making everyone. Yeah, exactly. It's huge. It's. It's. Why do you need an expensive device? The therabody like device is $600. The competing Dennis Gross, Dr. Dennis Gross device is 455. This is 349. And that's part of the reason I was intrigued. It's like, okay, you're bringing it down. You're doing something different with the cryo. There's a lot more, I think. I mean, I quoted the SVP of Product development from Shark on this in my article, which is also, like, the body one vibrates and, you know, to massage your skin. And I think the company probably touts some benefits to vibration. And I was like, well, I think I know the answer to this, but this is the shark cryoglow vibrate. And they're like, there is no vibration. This is a skincare device. Vibration does nothing for the skin. And I was like, you tell me, girl. You tell me. You know, I was like, I needed this.

[Dan Aykroyd]

That's all I needed.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yeah, exactly. And it's like, I think as we see more competition in this space where hopefully we'll see more people focus on what's actually going to work in this sort of device, where there's a lot of, like, junk science, there's a lot of, like. And my brain is so not working, but, like, stuff that doesn't quite work, pseudoscience stuff.

[Dan Aykroyd]

And it's. They make these claims and they do it at the show where everyone's making some wobbly claims.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

It's such a challenge to parse through all of it.

[Dan Aykroyd]

But also, how does.

[Bobby Bones]

Can I ask, just as a. Editorially.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yeah.

[Bobby Bones]

Like, how do you. I know that you. You know, the short answer is you work with a bunch of smart people that know their fields and stuff like that. How do you know? Because we saw multiple smart canes. I don't know if we saw the one that you all awarded. How can you tell if it's good or not? That's kind of a remedial way of phrasing it. My brain's also not.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Honestly, not the best I can with you. Yeah.

[Bobby Bones]

But we can just, whatever, make our little dolphin sounds back and forth, trying to communicate.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Thank you. I think it's partly because Engadget has had such a history of covering ces. We have the process down pat. We start the process the second we get the full exhibitor list for shows like Unveiled.

[Dan Aykroyd]

And can you actually walk us through the process?

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yeah, of course. Yeah. So, yeah, this was my first year, like, fully running the show for the team, and I started later than I wanted to. Like, since July, I've been like, we need to start planning ces, Right. And we at least get the travel and accommodation booked ahead of time. But this year, we started, like, November, which was late for us, and it was very late. I was very nervous. But the CTA also didn't have a lot of the directories ready for us to parse through until the week before Christmas. So we spent all two weeks. I didn't take time off during the Christmas break, and I just spent it looking at exhibitor lists. And we Google every single name that is an exhibitor. We find out what they do, and if we don't, we'll reach out, we'll find their PR email address. We'll reach out and be like, what are you showing at Cell Gas? Then we'll do the research of like, what is this? What is in the space? What else is already in the space? Is it new? Is it like, expensive? Is it junk? Right? And then the process actually happens before we fly off to Vegas. When we do get here, then we make the assignments of like, we're going to Unville, we're going to pepcom, we're going to these booths. These are the things that actually look interesting. We'll go and look at them. These are things that we don't know if they're good or not. We need to investigate them. We have a tag internally called investigate. And so we go look at the thing on the show floor. We have our reporters go out, talk to the company. And then also because we're in Vegas, the research is going to be limited to what we can Google within two minutes. Right. To make a call on whether this is important. But yes, we then we try to match the people with expertise in the space to the product. So at least they have a wealth of information.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Billy Steele is audio and oh my.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

God, he's so good.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Right, but that's the thing. You have specialist people.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yes, we have so much. Yeah. So Billy Steele is our specialist on audio. I mean, Devindra was here. He's our chip guy.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Oh, he was talking Nvidia.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Oh, yeah, all Nvidia, all day. And NPCs as well. I mean, Nvidia. I mean, we have a bunch of chip people too, which I'm so grateful for. And we have multiple experts on some categories and they can trade information. I wish you would get a chance to see the debates that happen in our room sometimes.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Next year. Next year, Next year. Well, we'll have you in here next year.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

This will be the Engadget podcast, basically. We'll have like the Engadget top experts.

[Dan Aykroyd]

We've had three of you on. I'm happy to have more.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

I'm glad you've had so many. I mean, there is such a diversity of voices and opinions on the team too, which I really like. And when they fight it out, that's my favorite because I'm like, yeah, we can agree to disagree.

[Dan Aykroyd]

But also I've been quite critical of some of the tech media on here. And I really. This show was not about, like, just ces. It's about kind of explaining how the tech media functions because it's very easy to. And I don't mean this as a specific insult to N Gadget. You could point at CNET or even the Verge. Definitely TechCrunch. It's. You think, oh, they just turn up and then they go, where's the big company? Or go look at a big company.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Wow.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Television big. But when there is actually quite a refined decade or more process that's gone into it. And also covering this show is insane.

[Bobby Bones]

That was the bit that was interesting to hear. I mean, obviously it sucks that you had to spend your entire holiday season parsing a list of 2,500, 3,000, however many companies there are. But it seems like it's so patently unmanageable. Like, it was unmanageable for us to. I don't know. You probably did see everything ever. Because you were here longer than me or came close to Nyah.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

No, you still never see anything.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

I discovered that. That there was a crypto pavilion that had been going on for the entire time.

[Bobby Bones]

Yeah.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

And I felt like I had. I didn't see him.

[Dan Aykroyd]

I looked everywhere.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

You know, I accidentally stumbled on it. Cause I was like, what are they doing in Germany?

[Sherlyn Lowe]

They do. They do. Yeah.

[Bobby Bones]

Yeah. And that is like. I don't know. I mean, I guess that's like sort of what happens with a show like this. That, like, you know, the idea is that, you know, for them, I guess the business is. You said, whatever it is, $5,000 a table for starters. And then it's probably significantly more.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Exactly.

[Bobby Bones]

It's like, yeah. So you don't say no to anybody unless it's like a women's health sex thing. We don't do that. But the idea of trying to manage something this size, it's impressive. Like, that's like a.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

You know, I have so much self doubt. So I'm always like, did we cover everything that we missed something? And it's. You're always going to. So that's why I had to, like, I led the team. Pep talk with this. Like, we're here. Number one, we made it here. Some people missed their flight. Some people were sick. Right. Number two, something's gonna go wrong and we'll just have to accept it.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Now, that was the first thing I said to Phil while playing this.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

There you go. Yeah.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Something will go wrong.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Exactly. So we cannot get hung up on. Like, I missed this thing, if I do that to myself at this show and to my team, we will just never walk away from this feeling like we've done our jobs and your coverage has been great.

[Dan Aykroyd]

And I say this like, truly as a reader of Engadget from 15 plus years, like a long, long time.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

He just turned 20 something. 20.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Yeah, that makes sense. And it's like this is a mammoth show to cover and it's hard to. And I've had the same thing running. This is my first CES I've run better offline on. And it's like, yeah, I'm like, shit, I miss this. I'll see an article, go out and be like, I'm the worst. I have failed the show, I've endangered the mission and it's just impossible to do. So I'm gonna change tack because you actually, and this is a miss of mine. Can you tell me what the Samsung Bally what this robot is? Because I've seen the articles and I go, I did not get a chance to look at it.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Well, I don't know that it's even here at CES 2025.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Well, someone's been showing pictures of it.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yeah, Bali. Bali's actually been at CES 2024. Well, it was debuted at CES 2024. But the concept of this like rolling robot that Samsung makes has been around for like what, five years I want to say, at least if not longer. And it's in its like most mature iteration, the one that's going on sale. It's this bowling ball sized yellow robot that rolls around your house. It's got a built in projector, it's got speakers built in. It listens to you speak. You can talk to it and be like, oh, turn, you know, open the shades or like start the oven or whatever. It talks to your smart home appliances. It can beam like your screen on the ceiling, on the wall, on the floor, wherever makes sense for you. The pitch was like, is this AI fitness companion but it's also your home assistant? All of these things. The news, the Cesar because last year was when they showed it off, this CES is that it's supposedly going to be available in the first half of this year. I will caveat that when they first announced Ball e properly in CES 2024, they did say it will be available in 2024. So it's like Samsung, are you really going to push this out this year? You know, more of that claims be cute, I guess send vibes, do that for free.

[Bobby Bones]

I was going to Say, seeing the pic again, there's a part every time somebody has talked about being like, yeah, and it follows you around. It can project stuff. It's not a good question, but the thing that's in my head is just like, really? Are you sure? That sounds really hard. That said, it is a cute little guy. And if you think this is something that I sort of picked up, I guess also from Karissa, that this does seem to be one of the themes of the CES is cute little guys. So this fits. This is like, it doesn't just blink at you. It follows you around, turns your stove on.

[Dan Aykroyd]

I say this with my Bengal cat, Babu, who is my familiar, and he follows me around and he meows at me. Wants to be on eye level, screaming at you.

[Bobby Bones]

I really enjoy the videos.

[Dan Aykroyd]

That's his sister, Pokey. I will post it, go to my socials. Pokey's his little sister, my beautiful screaming queen who loves to scream at me. She just wants affection all the time. And who doesn't? Babu is the beautiful, svelte Bengal who's mostly just up and he has a meow. Anyway. Anyway, I guess that's why I don't need this thing, because I already have something amazing to follow me. But at the same time, putting that aside, why do I need a robot following me? To what end is it following me? Oh, it's going to project something. What is it going to project?

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Right.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

May I also ask, when did the shift to, like, affectionate intelligence to keep.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Yeah, that's actually a good point.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

I mean, has that been something you guys have detected over the past few years?

[Sherlyn Lowe]

My opinion is, I mean, the AIBO has been around for a very long time and it's heaped every. Everyone's interest, but it never really took off. Nobody really sold them. But robotics, if you really look at the space in the real world, where is robotics? Robotics is in manufacturing. Robotics is in warehouses. They don't need to be humanoid robots. None of them needs to be. They just need to be arms that repeat an action over and over again and do it.

[Dan Aykroyd]

So there's a great deal of value in that.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Exactly. Do the things that we don't want to do these things, you know, we've. I think we are collectively learning that the humanoid robots don't quite make sense other than to impress people, to shock and awe.

[Bobby Bones]

Great. In movies.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Remind people about the Terminator. Exactly. And the. The actual helpful robot arms in those, like, manufacturing spaces are not as sexy and not as appealing visually. So what else is appealing?

[Dan Aykroyd]

Some. They Might be anyway.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

For some, they might be. Right, sure. But then, like, what is the next space they saw? They looked to Aibo. They looked to the cute ones. They realized people want cute. I mean, I think they looked at Pepper as well. There is, I think, function and use for some of them in specific spaces once again, which is, I think in the hospice care space, there is room for, like, telepresence robots. There's room for, like, sort of some sort of healthcare, like, robots. I go to this place called Kura Revolving Sushi.

[Bobby Bones]

Oh, a conveyor belt place.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yes, exactly.

[Bobby Bones]

That was her number one all through our 20s. That was. Yeah, the forever, like, whatever. Her birthday. Yeah, like, this is your. It was different places, I assume. Yes.

[Dan Aykroyd]

You did not say that.

[Bobby Bones]

Oh, did I say.

[Dan Aykroyd]

You just said her.

[Bobby Bones]

Her, her. Don't worry about it.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Sure.

[Bobby Bones]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Scarlett Johansson's voice. My longtime companion.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Do you remember Tommy Hacker?

[Bobby Bones]

My wife loves the, you know, like, whatever, a piece of nigiri slowly approaching you and you get to be like, I don't mind if I do.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Honestly, that sounds great.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

It's my favorite thing. Kura Revolving Sushi has a robot that brings you your drinks when you request for it. Right. Like, all the servers have to do is place your drink on the tier.

[Dan Aykroyd]

And then when I was in Korea at the beginning of last year, there was a dishwasher, dishbot, and it worked and it seemed to actually work. Robotics is here.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yeah.

[Dan Aykroyd]

But like many things at ces, it's sexy. I guess it is not that exciting.

[Bobby Bones]

Yeah. Well, this comes back to something that we were talking about yesterday, Edward, that, like, if the actual applications for a lot of these robots are like, like you said, it's like either elder care or accessibility and stuff like that. That seems like it's the case for a lot of this stuff. A lot of this sort of like augmented reality, if that's the term for it. I don't know if it's AR or whatever. Not the thing like the brain implant. What do you call that?

[Dan Aykroyd]

Neuralink?

[Bobby Bones]

No, the one.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

The non invasive one.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Yeah, yeah, but like your one that was made up.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Ah, so like gesture control of devices.

[Bobby Bones]

Yeah, that sort of stuff.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Gotcha, gotcha.

[Bobby Bones]

It's like all of that seems to be about helping people who have these. And yet, like, it seems like with this robot, you make it cute because. And you show when you're demoing it for people. You don't want people to think about being sick. I guess that's not good for advertising. But you show them instead this thing that I'm not sure that people really want to be followed around their house. I'll turn my own stove on. Honestly, I don't want anyone else to be. But there's something funny about the idea of inventing this thing that actually is useful, actually could add value to people's lives. But you can't sell it it.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yeah.

[Bobby Bones]

In a way that actually reflects its utility.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

I again, another thing I've ranted about for a couple of years now is how much we're failing people in terms of elder care. Long term care for people in like late stages of life. And the reason we do that as a society is because I think companies and corporations don't see value in providing this sort of care or, or more products in this space. Right. And so that's why they don't want to tell you that this is better suited for like elder care caregiver situations. Even though there are companies that will come out and say that bigger companies won't want to do it. Because like a pr, I, I'm thinking this is a PR conversation. I don't know that they want to say that we're investing in this thing that serves a very niche audience that might die off in a few years.

[Dan Aykroyd]

And there is a reason and that absolutely. Is it because you don't get a growth market.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Exactly. The only growth, the growth mindset that sucks.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Exactly. And you also don't get growth out of things with elderly people other than being a private, private equity firm that buys old people homes.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Yes. I mean this is, this is one thing I think of with the care economy, which is like the, the growth of it has been decided largely by the consequences of private equity firms laying waste to infrastructure, seeing services they can build into it and then the evaporation of resources for facilities leading to these firms, these on demand firms coming in and applying the Uber model to them and saying look, we will create a marketplace where the nurses will bid each other to the lowest possible price. They'll come in without training. I mean training in the sense that because they're not employees, they're not told where things are, who to take care of, how to operate.

[Bobby Bones]

Like that itinerant nurse, traveling nurse economy.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

And this makes me think of what we see sometimes with some of this technology that's being offered and that some of the things that we've seen would be very good and very useful and should be durable, sustainable businesses just offering care to help people who are not able bodied, to help people who are in cognitive decline, to help people who need Care. And yet when we would talk with some of them, you could see that's not always the first way they think or talk about it. They're also talking about, oh, this firm would love this application that we have. And it's like, okay, but. But like, that's not real. The thing that is real is this care. This way you would have to be able to help people who need care, but you're kind of using it. Some of these firms feel like they're using it to bootstrap into the growth.

[Bobby Bones]

You know, but you have to, like, bang. It's such a bizarre thing for me, too. Especially when you consider, like, what amazing. I mean, for the ones that actually exist, like, not everything that we saw, you know, exists in any sort of real stage yet. But, like, the idea that you have to, like, bang on the sort of fantastical growth possibilities instead of the actual service. Yeah. That you have created a thing that can, you know, provide this very necessary service with this remarkable bit of technology. You did.

[Dan Aykroyd]

There's no further ways to monetize the old person. I'm not. I like that. It's funny. Whatever. Well, not for me, because I'm like the joker, because I laugh at the sad things, but it's this sense of, well, there's not. Why am I investing in these people? Why would I invest in the old person? They're gonna die soon anyway. We need to get inside. We live in a society.

[Bobby Bones]

That's the part that's kind of weird about. Cause it's not wrong to say that this is like a niche marketplace.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yeah, correct.

[Bobby Bones]

And yet it's like, it's also not. It is also like, one of the least niche experiences possible is getting old and needing help. That's a pretty universal human. I mean, for those of us that are lucky to make it that far, like. Yeah, it's weird. I mean, I guess this is like, sort of going to be a recurring theme anywhere that you go to, like, a trade show where people are trying to make a billion dollars.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

To that end, I was very encouraged to see this year there has been quite a lot more attention in this space. Right. We saw the AARP head. I mean, I saw. I stopped by the HTEC Pavilion on the show for. Tell us about.

[Dan Aykroyd]

We really haven't heard about this.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yeah. So I went there and the HTEC Pavilion, presented by aarp, I guess, is. Is just a space in the show floor. They have so many of these, like, dedicated spaces carved out. They had a speech where they presented four special products, I believe. Well, the one I saw and I tried on were this pair of pants by arc'dyrx and a company called Skip that they've worked with. This pair of pants is like a robotic powered pants situation where you put them on and they have sort of almost like an exoskeleton to help you move and climb better. And we're at the point with products that are designed for improving life for people with mobility issues where it's not, you don't have to be like, it's not binary. Right. You don't have to be a full on paraplegic. And it's not crutches and wheelchairs. This is for people who have some pain, struggle with knee pain, that sort of thing.

[Dan Aykroyd]

And often these people are neglect. Maybe thinking of someone in my family, refused to get any help because they are like, I'm not, I'm not a bit stubborn. Nothing's wrong with me. I'm just in constant pain and have mobility issues. But these things sound kind of magical for that.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

These are, these are going to be great. But these are for. Because they're octoring, they're an outdoor like apparel brand and that sort of thing. They're designed for like hiking and this. So it's more like if you're at a stage in life where you're so burdened by some like leg pain or body pain that like going outside seems like such a pipe dream anymore. Like climbing a mountain. Level a hill. Right.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Like you can walk around, you can't really be active.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Exactly. Like challenges like scaling like elevation and whatnot. This, this is what this pair of pants is designed to be.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Were they powered by anything or were they just.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

There was a battery pack in the back of the, the pants and in the waist.

[Dan Aykroyd]

And what did they do? Did they support the knees or the legs?

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yeah. So the one I tried by Arcturix had three like braces, one around the ankle, one around the knee and one around like the thigh. And then the robot arm would just kind of propel you in those positions.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Well as the joints moved around.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Right. And it's designed my demo. We had to go to like stairs because that's where you would demonstrate the effectiveness more. Yeah, it's supposed to push you up. I tried to do speed squats right in those. I don't, I'm not the target market clearly. But I was like, like, yeah, I was like trying to see speed squats and I think when I tried them they weren't on. But they're supposed to help you get from like the bent knee position to the up position more easily, which is where I think a lot of people struggle with pain.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Well, I, in the last few, in like the last year, I've really got into yoga. And I would say a year ago I'd have trouble getting on and off the floor.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Right.

[Dan Aykroyd]

And I'm decent. Like, I'm decently able bodied. Like I don't have something wrong other than the fact that I was deeply inflexible. Being able to do that now is magic. But that took a shit ton of effort to get. But also I didn't have any mobility issues that would have precluded me from doing yoga.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yeah.

[Dan Aykroyd]

So this. Do you know how expensive this is?

[Sherlyn Lowe]

It's expensive.

[Dan Aykroyd]

How expensive we talking?

[Sherlyn Lowe]

I mean, you know the Arcturic's brand.

[Bobby Bones]

I was gonna say the stuff that they have that doesn't have robot arms in it is still like expensive.

[Dan Aykroyd]

So how much are we talking?

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yeah, I think so. They have no like actual info yet, but the ballpark figure that I'm hearing is like 5,000. And I was like, are you gonna talk to insurance providers to get this subsidized? They were like, they want to consider it. I don't think this is a product. The insurance providers have to decide whether to cover it.

[Dan Aykroyd]

They barely cover medicine.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Exactly. There you go. My. I don't want to get into it.

[Bobby Bones]

But yeah, also I can't imagine you're like anybody's paying. Like you're not selling a lot of stuff at MSRP when it's $5,000.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Exactly.

[Dan Aykroyd]

I will be honest though, secretly, this is the stuff I'm most excited about because like the idea of just putting on a suit that makes you able bodied for anyone is kind of, I don't know, like I was a very heavy kid growing up like 325 pounds. And that alone, like didn't mean I was strong, which is very embarrassing when you're large, I will add. But nevertheless, like even when I got thin, I still felt quite weak. I still had like some joint issues even. And it's like the idea that we can kind of level the playing field other than the fact it's $5,000 is kind of cool.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

You want to hear something?

[Dan Aykroyd]

Absolutely.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

After I saw those, I walked downstairs to the Kickstarter booth and the Kickstarter booth had a company for, from somewhere in Asia, I think Taiwan or China, I can't remember, called Hypershell. And they make like a non pants version of this exoskeleton. It is between 800 to $1,500, depending on the material.

[Dan Aykroyd]

When you say non pants, how does that.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yes. So it's this sort of brace that you strap on around your waist to start, and then you strap, like, two things to your knees, and they're basically an exoskeleton. The reason is not on Engadget.com. yes. I haven't written it up yet. I'm still technically working, I guess, but chilling and. Yeah. And so they do the same thing the Arc Expanse do, except for in an exoskeleton that you strap around your clothes.

[Dan Aykroyd]

So cool.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

I love this, actually. I'll show you a video right now. I don't know if.

[Dan Aykroyd]

If you can. When. When will you write up your story? Just send me the link.

[Phil Broughton]

I'll get it.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

I will send you the link. Yes. I'm hoping to do it tomorrow and have it up over the weekend on our website.

[Dan Aykroyd]

And I just. I think that this is what I wish CES all was. Because if you think about what makes technology actually magical, it's. It's stuff that makes you stronger, connect with people quicker, allows you to explore who you are and who other people are in an honest way. And when it gets worse, it's when people interfere with that process.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Or slap AI and everything.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Or slap AI and everything. So as we go, as we sadly come to the end, we've got four minutes left. Was there anything you were like your favorite, favorite thing? Was there something you missed? Is there anything you really missed that you truly liked or despised?

[Sherlyn Lowe]

I kept something that made me laugh, but I kind of liked it.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Sold.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

What was it? So we started noticing a trend at CES 2025. Carissa might have talked about it, but Dan Cooper on our team was the first one to crystallize this idea with this term. I mean, I crystallized the idea without this fancy name that he came up with it.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Classic Dan.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Classic Dan. Great term. The Hawk Tour show.

[Dan Aykroyd]

God, yes. What are you talking. I want to know.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

There was so much like saliva sensing, saliva detecting tech.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Oh, boy. On that thing.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Huh? On that thing. I mean, look, when we walked into CES Unveiled, which is the first show on Sunday night, I already knew there were two saliva based, like, devices there. I was not expecting. The most popular booth at CES Unveiled, where, like, crowds of people were around them the whole time. I couldn't even get into a demo. This thing called Salt Spoon. Have you heard of it? Everyone was licking it. It was like everybody's putting things in their mouths at this show. I was like, I don't know.

[Bobby Bones]

I got to. So I don't want to touch a salt spoon. Yeah, it's a cool idea. They were not. Not letting people put it in their mouth at that point. There was like a video.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

They probably ran out. Maybe they were giving away disposable ones that failed. Yeah, yeah.

[Bobby Bones]

There were like a couple of them sitting on the counter and I like picked it up and I was like, I don't know. Feels good. Like I don't like a spoon more or less, but stranger. But then there was like a video of a guy eating ramen with it. Yeah.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

And.

[Bobby Bones]

But you know, you had to guess like you like to. It was just sort of like.

[Dan Aykroyd]

It's the one with the electromagnetic things to make you taste the saltiness.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Right? Yes, exactly. So think about it. If you're trying to consume like less sodium in your life, but you still want to have salty foods. This food supposed if you use the spoon, it'll turn everything you put in your mouth by tricking your taste buds into something that's like thinking that something salty or saltier than it is.

[Bobby Bones]

What I learned about this from, from Jesse Farrar, where I get all of my scientific information. This is apparently the same technology that people use for saltwater pools that it's basically a way of like making something salty without like dumping a bunch of sodium into it.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

So the idea is you will shy away from things that have a certain level of salt because they'll taste even more salt.

[Dan Aykroyd]

I can answer this because I've had a lot of emails when we last mentioned it. Want to apologize to the people. We kind of turn our nose up at this. It turns out there are people who have real physical problems with salt. They have to. It's not like I should have less salt. It's if I have too much, I will be in physical pain. And this is magical for them. It's like I want to. As this show goes on, as we approach the end, anything I really mess up, I will try and fix. But apparently this is a big thing deal for those people. You can like have salt.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yeah. It's not just like a diet thing too. Right. It's like some people have irritation, inflammation, or I don't know if there's a salt allergy in the world, but. Hypertension, Right, Hypertension. So you want hypertension as a diet based thing that I'm considering as an issue. Right. Like for healthy reasons, you still want to be able to taste salty foods. It's not about making something taste so salty that you Will avoid it. It's more drinking bland things that will then taste salty because of the using of the spoon.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

This makes sense.

[Bobby Bones]

Gathered it was like you also get the. You can kind of like dial in the experience of like what want. I think because there's. Isn't that right that it's like you can go from like 1 to 4 and have salties.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

I walked the periphery of the booth the whole time because I couldn't get inside.

[Bobby Bones]

What was the other saliva based stuff?

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Yeah, let's find thing you could spit on.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yeah. There were two things.

[Dan Aykroyd]

We call it the thing. We call it the thang.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yeah. Don't try. I. Here we are giggling about it.

[Dan Aykroyd]

But it is weird. Weird.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

It is. This is. There are two devices. One is called the cordescense and the other is called hormometer. We're not fans of the. Yeah, sorry.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Hormones.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Her hormometer like hormone meter. Sounds good.

[Dan Aykroyd]

That's just a really funny and good.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

It's a great portmanteau. I think hormometer is slightly further along in my opinion of the process. Basically these are at home tests that you can use your saliva that you can use on your saliva and they'll tell you how much like. Like cortisol is in your.

[Bobby Bones]

Okay.

[Dan Aykroyd]

So I think the problem is the labeling because everything you've described is wonderful and could also have not been described as saliva based.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Well, that was to me the way it came off and that was my vibe. I mean.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Yeah, that's. That is saliva based. Yeah.

[Bobby Bones]

I'll get like some. Some faint Theranos tasting notes on this.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Interesting. Interesting. I. I like it because like I'm really into like getting data about yourself.

[Bobby Bones]

Right.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

But I don't want blood testing all the time. I don't believe in the photo scanning of face to tell your face age. I want you to actually use I guess bodily fluids to know what is up with me. And this seems smart. Right? Like it's non invasive. It's an easy way. And. And there's so many ways that we can avoid going to the doctor. I guess it's not like going to a doctor is a bad thing is that like people want to know more about themselves. People have been strapping glucose monitors on themselves just to understand their blood sugar levels when they don't have diabetes. Right. So there's so many reasons people could benefit from analyzing their saliva in my opinion. For a hormone, they do both cortisol and progesterone levels.

[Dan Aykroyd]

And what would those be? Just for the cortisol?

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yeah. Cortisol is the stress hormone. So the levels of cortisol are high, you're in higher stress. And then progesterone is something that people can use to track, I guess fertility related things or cycle related or there's so I'm not well versed enough in the science here to tell you what.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Else progesterone's about that makes all of us. And sadly we have to come to the end of this part of the show. Show Ed where can people find you?

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

The tech bubble substack.com this machine kills and Big black jackabin on Twitter and.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Blue sky Sherilyn where can people find you?

[Sherlyn Lowe]

I think I'll still be on the meta apps for a bit, so sherlynstagram C H E R L Y N N S T H E r a.

[Bobby Bones]

M defector.com the Distraction podcast, the It's Christmas Town podcast, and Davidjroth BSky Social.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Though I realize many of you plot my end, and indeed when you hear I'm hurt, you cheer and laugh and squeal. Annoying. Nevertheless, if you don't want to cause me misery, you'll follow the following ads with your complete undivided attention.

[Paola Pedrosa]

Have you ever looked into the night sky and wondered who or what was flying around up there? We've seen planes, helicopters, hot air balloons, and birds. But what if there's something else, something much more ominous that appears under the COVID of night? Silent, unseen, watching. They may be right above your car late one night as you cruise down the road, or look like mysterious light hovering above your home. Drones? Or are they?

[Alec Baldwin]

We used the word drone because it.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Was comfortable to other people. One minute was there and one minute it wasn't. Oh, that is beyond creepy. Do you feel like this drone was targeting you? Specifically?

[Phil Broughton]

Yes, absolutely.

[Paola Pedrosa]

Listen to Obscurum Invasion of the Drone Drones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Oz Veloson]

Do you want to understand an invisible force that's shaping your life? I'm Osvaloshin, one of the new hosts of the long running podcast Tech Stuff. I'm slightly skeptical, but obsessively intrigued.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

And I'm Cara Price, the other new host, and I'm ready to adopt early.

[Oz Veloson]

And often on tech stuff. We travel all the way from the mines of Congo to the surface of Mars to the dark corners of TikTok to ask and attempt to answer burning questions about technology.

[Dan Aykroyd]

One of the kind of tricks for surviving Mars is to live there long enough so that people evolve into Martians.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Like data is A very rough proxy for a complex reality.

[Dan Aykroyd]

How is it possible that the world's new energy revolution can be based in this place where there's no electricity at night?

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Oz and I will cut through the noise to bring you the best conversations and deep dives that will help you understand how tech is changing our world and what you need to know to survive the singularity. So join us.

[Oz Veloson]

Listen to tech stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Alec Baldwin]

How serious is youth vaping? Irreversible lung damage serious. 1 in 10 kids vape serious, which warrants a serious conversation from a serious parental figure like yourself. Not the Seriously know it all sports dad or the seriously smart podcast. It requires a serious conversation that is best had by you. No, seriously, the best person to talk to your child about vaping is you. To start the conversation, visit talkaboutvaping.org, brought to you by the American Lung association and the AD Council.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Welcome.

[Indeed Advertiser]

My name is Paola Pedrosa, a medium.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

And the host of the Ghost Therapy podcast where it's not just about connecting with deceased loved ones, it's about learning through them and their new perspective.

[Indeed Advertiser]

Join me on the Ghost Therapy podcast.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Whoa.

[Phil Broughton]

My lights in my living room just flickered. I'm a little nervous.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

I'm excited. I'm excited nervous. You know, I'm very spiritual person, so I'm like, I'm ready and open. That was amazing. I feel so grateful right now. I got to speak to my great grandmother Abuela and she gave me a lot of really good advice that I'm going to have to really think about. Wow. Okay, that's crazy. Yes, that is accurate.

[Indeed Advertiser]

Listen to the Ghost Therapy podcast as part of the My Cultura Podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Hey, this is Mel Reid, LPGA Tour winner and six time ladies European Tour winner.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

And Kira K. Dixon, NBC sports reporter and host.

[Dan Aykroyd]

You forgot to say all my Miss America, by the way.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

And we've got a new podcast, Quiet please. With Mel and Kira. We are bringing you spicy takes on sports and pop culture, some golf haps and interviews with incredible people who have figured out how to make golf their.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Superpower or just people we like.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Plus tales from the road and everything in between.

[Dan Aykroyd]

By the way, golf isn't just for the dads, brads and chads.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yeah, it's actually life's cheat code and we're not going to be quiet about it on or off the course. We're bringing on some of our friends, like Michelle Lee, Heather McMahon, Amanda Baliotis.

[Dan Aykroyd]

So if you want to keep up with us.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

And here is Yap. Tune into our new podcast, Listen to Quiet, Please with Mel and Kira, an iHeart women's sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment. You can find us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports.

[Dan Aykroyd]

And we're back, and we're just talking about the fact that we each of us has two or three drinks at this point. We're not. All right. It's not to destruction. It's just a little bit.

[Phil Broughton]

Triple fisting is a beautiful thing.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Okay, well, we've already had complaints about the language, so let's just move on from that one. So we're once again joined by Mr. Phil Broughton.

[Phil Broughton]

Hello.

[Dan Aykroyd]

The health physicist. Just let's reintegrate that and reintroduce you to the show.

[Phil Broughton]

Allow me to introduce myself. Okay, so I'm Phil Broughton. I am a health physicist, which is a radiation safety professional. I'm also a laser safety officer, so I take care of the full electromagnetic spectrum of radiation. I also am the weird shit guy.

[Bobby Bones]

And Phil and your bartender, Phil is here at CES showing the laser mask that he made that people can. That's not. FDA approved, that product.

[Phil Broughton]

So you have seen that?

[Bobby Bones]

No.

[Phil Broughton]

Have you seen the laser bra as well?

[Bobby Bones]

No, that's. Is that really.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Is that real?

[Phil Broughton]

That is real.

[Dan Aykroyd]

What does it do? What are you talking about? You haven't been on the floor.

[Phil Broughton]

No, this wasn't on the floor. This is just why the Internet exists. My sons.

[Dan Aykroyd]

So Phil is someone I torture?

[Phil Broughton]

Yes.

[Dan Aykroyd]

We've been friends for 15 years. Sorry, I also missed something out. Mr. Edon Guesso Jr. Is to my right, the wonderful.

[Phil Broughton]

Hello.

[Dan Aykroyd]

And I'm Ed.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Now he's Zed.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Yeah. So Sherman has been calling me Zed.

[Bobby Bones]

You having a laugh?

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

You have a.

[Bobby Bones]

You taking a piss, mate?

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Mr. Zitron, I'm, like, searching my head. Can I do any accent?

[Bobby Bones]

Try it out.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Yeah. Beans on toast.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Oh, one time I did have an English breakfast, and I felt like I was gonna die.

[Dan Aykroyd]

That's just how it feels to be British.

[Bobby Bones]

Okay, back to all of your British levels maxed out.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Yeah. The British saliva test.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

All my Kenyan ancestors were like, what is this?

[Bobby Bones]

Don't let them win.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Oh, God. Oh, boy. There's so many directions. But back to Phil. So why does this show frustrate you? So we've gone over the fire marshal aspect, but just the general, the general milieu of CES does appear to torture you. So.

[Phil Broughton]

So a lot of what vendors are coming to CES with are not. Despite the fact it says consumer Electronics show. Many of the things are not aimed for consumers, never meant for consumers or these are not products that are actually on the market, not going to get to the market. And it's terrifying how many people who have come on the show have been talking to me separately at the bar, have said that they've met people at the stalls who asked them, so what do you think our product should do? No, that's not what you do. If you have a product you're going to sell to someone, you really better know what it does so it can be sold legally and safely.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Well, so that it could do.

[Phil Broughton]

Oh, well, there's that too.

[Bobby Bones]

Is that part of the. Again be asking an ignorant question.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Okay, you are days in. You need to stop leading in with the item. I'm not saying no.

[Bobby Bones]

I don't know a lot about ce. I mean I know something about like what this one looks like and how it feels. Maybe that seems, that does strike me as strange. The idea of showing up with something that's like halfway done. Like the idea of me just like publishing a draft with a bunch of TKs in it and being like, I'm really interested in anybody's feedback on how, how you think this story should conclude.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Well, listen brother, after this we're gonna drive out west to a little place I like to call Palo Alto, where you get to see a whole world that is built on stuff.

[Bobby Bones]

Bobby shipping the prototype.

[Dan Aykroyd]

It's like Pete Alonso just made an offer, a three year deal to the Mets, which is news I'm giving to David.

[Bobby Bones]

You're allowed to do that?

[Dan Aykroyd]

Yeah, it's much like that. What will you do, Peter? And that is actually a good question for the Mets at this point, but.

[Bobby Bones]

Nevertheless happy to field that one if you want. Oh please, do some Mets stuff.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Lasers.

[Phil Broughton]

Shoot them all with lasers.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Handle the Mets real quick.

[Bobby Bones]

Couldn't hurt. Now the Alonzo thing, I as sentimentally as a Mets fan, I hope he returns. I think he's declining. The Mets seem to think he's declining. If he's making offers to them, maybe he thinks he's declining, but whatever. He seems very happy to be on the Mets and I think that that is rare enough that I hope he stays. That's a completely straight faced answer.

[Dan Aykroyd]

What apps Pete Alonso has for listeners.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Who don't know what what are the Mets?

[Bobby Bones]

The Mets are. So they're one of the. That's a great question.

[Dan Aykroyd]

That's such a me thing to say. Thank you.

[Bobby Bones]

Obviously you haven't been down to the Eureka level. They are a. It's a. It's an AI enabled.

[Dan Aykroyd]

No, the Mets. The Mets are a private equity firm owned by a billionaire that ostensibly sells baseball related services. They only recently updated their terms of services to allow for baseball related success with the acquisition of a company called Juan Soto.

[Bobby Bones]

They're on a subscription model like a lot of these guys. You gotta keep paying if you want them to. Well, whatever. We're not gonna talk about the National League East.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Yeah. I just realized we have gone fully into the Mets. So we need to.

[Phil Broughton]

That was beautiful.

[Dan Aykroyd]

I am so sorry. But Phil, putting the fire marshal stuff aside, what is it with lasers and these people? Like, what is it? Why do they love to bring up lasers so much? Like what do you think it is?

[Phil Broughton]

Okay. So this would be several decades of career experience and just watching people and what they do. There's something in the human psyche that gets very excited about whatever thing there is in the world. What if I put a laser on it?

[Dan Aykroyd]

Right?

[Phil Broughton]

That will make it better? Or alternatively this thing that already does the thing it normally does. Would a laser make it do it better? But the problem.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Do they know what a laser is?

[Phil Broughton]

Also often not great.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Keep going.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

What is a laser?

[Phil Broughton]

Light amplification by simulated emission of radiation.

[Bobby Bones]

I didn't know it was an acronym.

[Phil Broughton]

It is just like scuba.

[Bobby Bones]

I thought something that was cool and.

[Dan Aykroyd]

I didn't realize it was an acronym until you asked that question. I have an IQ of 7.

[Phil Broughton]

But the more exciting thing and the reason why I get excited about it and products that happen is how we regulate lasers in the United States of America. This is your important asterisk that goes in the post of these rules and regulations only apply in the United States of America. In your jurisdiction. They may be different. When lasers became a thing that weren't just stuff nerds played with in the national laboratory, the very first market they hit. The first consumer consumer is very relative product was for ophthalmological treatments where you're doing laser cautery zapping to fix in the eye. In the eye. To cauterize off new veins growing in the retina. To save people who are losing their vision from glaucoma or other diabetic retinopathy. Because the first application of lasers that really hit the consumer market was a medical application. Is the reason why lasers are Regulated by the Food and Drug Administration's center for device and Radiologic Health. Which means any consumer product that incorporates a laser is supposed to have been vetted and compliant with a federal laser product performance standard that the FDA promulgates. And they only get one chance to catch you is when you release your product into commerce. And that has a very specific regulatory meaning.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Which is.

[Phil Broughton]

Oh God. You actually want to know?

[Dan Aykroyd]

Yeah.

[Phil Broughton]

Okay.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Yes.

[Bobby Bones]

Well, I'm assuming for our purposes here, the stuff that's downstairs, a lot of the places have, as you pointed out, like they'll be like a little tagline where like this has not been shown to the FDA yet or.

[Phil Broughton]

No, no, they do.

[Bobby Bones]

Right.

[Phil Broughton]

Not approved by the fda.

[Bobby Bones]

All right.

[Phil Broughton]

Or is being used under basically the funsies code of the regulation.

[Bobby Bones]

When you have something at cps, even if you have a prototype on it, it has not been released into commerce. Is that correct?

[Phil Broughton]

Correct.

[Bobby Bones]

Okay.

[Phil Broughton]

So commerce's specific means is you have a laser product that you have made more than one of and or is being used somewhere other than the place where it was initially built and or by someone who was not the person who originally built it. Which means if you listen to those three statements, at no point does money have to exchange hands.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

It doesn't.

[Dan Aykroyd]

So they only have to to build two.

[Phil Broughton]

The moment you hit two, you have made a laser product versus people reading.

[Dan Aykroyd]

This as commerce, meaning it's on Amazon.

[Phil Broughton]

Which is what most people think it means.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Sweet.

[Phil Broughton]

That's how the regulation covers it. To try to cover tricks like people. Oh well, just you're a friend. I'll make you a second one of these setups and I'll ship everything that I just did over to you at your other laboratory. You have no idea how the very specific quirk of I have duct tape sitting right here on this setup to protect that beam from going out. That will blind me. Also, it takes so very little laser power to actually be blinded.

[Dan Aykroyd]

But also that feels like a valuable point to this, which is just because they've made two, doesn't mean they've made two safe ones. Like if there are little workarounds like when you release something under these regulations you're discussing, I imagine you probably want to think of a more rigorous housing than tape.

[Phil Broughton]

Correct. That's when I mentioned the federal laser project performance standard, AKA the flips. It specifies the components that your laser should have to be a legal laser product that could be sold into commerce.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Right.

[Phil Broughton]

They're not just you have to be eye safe levels of power, which is defined as less than 1 milliwatt per square centimeter on the retina. It also has things like you have interlocks so that if you pop open the house, it turns off or it drops a shutter.

[Dan Aykroyd]

And these are things that people don't classically put in the first version.

[Phil Broughton]

Not classically, no good. Also, other things like there's indicator lights, there's switches, there's key interlocks, all the things that sound like functionalities. Buttons.

[Bobby Bones]

Yeah.

[Phil Broughton]

Things that vanish from the design of products the moment you catch apple disease and decide that every single product should be a smooth tablet of silicon that you wave your hands at and they do magically magic, rather than, what is my product doing?

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

So, God, Steve Jobs intended.

[Dan Aykroyd]

So how does this manifest into problems at ces?

[Phil Broughton]

Well, first, you have handed products often to salespeople on the floor to go set up and talk about and try to make a sale.

[Dan Aykroyd]

You are most certainly not the engineers who built it or laser safety officers.

[Phil Broughton]

Correct. The other thing is bringing a laser onto the floor. And this takes us back to the fire marshal chat that constitutes one of the hazards you actually have to let the CTA know about so they can tell the fire marshals, because that changes the occupancy of the room. Also, they have safety personnel they call to come evaluate setups. So if you say you're bringing a laser to the floor, a laser safety officer will come. Oh, you should put an enclosure around that product you brought because you don't actually have one now. This defeats the purpose of you're trying to show your product. Now they can't see it through the enclosure that protects people from it. That should indicate that maybe your product is not great.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Yeah, but I want to see the.

[Phil Broughton]

Product you won't see at all.

[Dan Aykroyd]

You won't see anything at the end.

[Bobby Bones]

That's disturbing. And that's the hand of Big Brother in a lot of ways. Trying to keep you from being blinded by a laser.

[Phil Broughton]

Yeah. Big vision got you under a hotel.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

What is it? Move fast, blind quick.

[Bobby Bones]

Yes. That's pretty, right? Yep.

[Dan Aykroyd]

So. But I just want to. Actually, here's a really good thing for listeners. What are the consequences of not following these things? What do these products do to you as a person in the event these regulations are not followed?

[Phil Broughton]

Blinding fires.

[Bobby Bones]

And is that bad?

[Phil Broughton]

Yeah. Fair question.

[Dan Aykroyd]

That is a good question. I'm glad that we have a balanced, balanced group here.

[Phil Broughton]

So just a quick rundown. If you go look at your product that has a laser in it, odds on favor you have one. It's probably a printer in your home.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Right.

[Phil Broughton]

If you go look on it, there will be a little yellow sticker on the box that says Class 1 laser device.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Right.

[Phil Broughton]

That means it is safe for use under any viewing conditions. You have no access to a hazardous laser beam.

[Dan Aykroyd]

You don't need eye protection or anything like that.

[Phil Broughton]

You do not, because the housing that's in there will protect you. Mind you, most laser printers are actually Class 4 lasers, which are absolutely blinding and capable of setting fires. If you took all of the housing that makes the printer off of it.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Okay.

[Phil Broughton]

So there is a much more powerful laser that is dangerous to you hiding inside of it. One of the other things that happens at CES and other shows like Photonics west, where I will be in a couple of weeks. Weeks is people try to get around some of the consumer protection standards by rather than selling you a finished product, they sell you parts as original equipment manufacturers. If you go buy OEM parts, which you are free to do because America, everyone salute.

[Dan Aykroyd]

He is saluting. I'm saluting right now.

[Phil Broughton]

Thank you, everyone.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Thank you, everyone.

[Phil Broughton]

If you go buy, buy a laser OEM laser product and integrate it into your system because you thought this stuff is great, this bangs, all it needs is a laser.

[Bobby Bones]

Yeah.

[Phil Broughton]

The moment you add a laser to it, you just churned the thing you made into a laser product. A finished one is subject to all of those rules like enclosures, lights, housings, interlock, bucks. You just became a laser manufacturer and you didn't want to be supporting entrepreneurs.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

With that sort of initiative.

[Bobby Bones]

I agree with Edwin's question. It does feel weird. This is like the. It's like a 3D printer Y type scenario where there's like. It seems like the 3D printers, but like the distance between reach and grasp here is like actually a matter of life and death. Like the idea that, like, I could could, by doing a few different things that more or less involve following instructions, become a laser manufacturer. Like, I don't even brush my teeth before 11 in the morning on a lot of days. Like I shouldn't be trusted with being able to do stuff like that.

[Dan Aykroyd]

No. And that actually was a very good point, which is what Phil is describing is how easy it is to do this insane shit.

[Phil Broughton]

Very. And to bring it back to the fda. Their control point is releasing a product product into commerce, after which the FDA doesn't really have control of it anymore because it's now in. The only other thing that a laser manufacturer is required to do as far as the FDA is concerned, is maintain a Log of injuries associated with their product and recall.

[Dan Aykroyd]

I have to do that with the podcast.

[Phil Broughton]

Yeah. Several listeners have already to my heart.

[Bobby Bones]

Recalling bits.

[Phil Broughton]

Recalling bits or entire systems.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

After close examination, we realized that bit number 76C from episode 26.

[Dan Aykroyd]

The thing about the wussy was problematic.

[Bobby Bones]

Could cause emotions. We have to injury the listeners.

[Dan Aykroyd]

So, Phil, on the floor over the years, what are the manifestations specifically of this thing? What are the things that you have seen and heard of that you can terrorize my good friends Mr. Of Roth and Mr. Nguesa with?

[Phil Broughton]

So let's go back to the laser bra.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Okay, please.

[Phil Broughton]

This was actually a club item where the idea was you could be your own laser light show. Not just you put out the laser emitting product to go with the music, but it will actually react to your dancing and will change the brightness, change the color.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Why did they use lasers though, if it's an LED light source?

[Phil Broughton]

Because lasers make everything better. Also, LED also can stand for laser.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Emitting diode sensing thing. Are they. They don't sense things.

[Phil Broughton]

They do things they can also emit.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Right, but are you saying that they use lasers to emit light?

[Phil Broughton]

Yes.

[Dan Aykroyd]

On the fucking bra.

[Phil Broughton]

Dozens of them.

[Dan Aykroyd]

We have lights.

[Phil Broughton]

No, but they could be lasers to shine in very visible beams across the entire room.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Okay, I'm not the lazy, lazy Jesus Christ.

[Phil Broughton]

This slip of the tongue happens constantly.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Laser safety expert here. But I think the idea of shooting a bunch of lasers out of one's breasts where people might be looking is fun. It may be, but it also might fun and flirty.

[Bobby Bones]

A great look for the season 30.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Flirty and thriving. That feels dangerous.

[Phil Broughton]

You have very pained looks on your faces at the very end.

[Bobby Bones]

Not me.

[Dan Aykroyd]

I feel no pain like the Zohan.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Whether it would be worth it, you.

[Bobby Bones]

Know, like literally risking it all. Risking your ability to persuade to look.

[Dan Aykroyd]

At, you know, what sort of.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

So what sort of party could I go to? And I'd be like, that was fine.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Yeah, I got blinded.

[Bobby Bones]

I pretty much got what I paid for.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Philly is like desperate to actually.

[Phil Broughton]

There's also totally been the laser butt plug that showed up at death.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Okay, that. No, no, no, no, no.

[Phil Broughton]

But same thing. Dropping trial.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Much like.

[Phil Broughton]

No, this actually was someone's make fun.

[Bobby Bones]

Of them more effectively.

[Phil Broughton]

But the one that was most relevant that actually did show up at CES and it had has shown up dozens of times on Hacker news and other interesting maker websites as someone who had made a laser based bong. Now this is a problem because again, you've taken A concept of a totally workable product that already exists. Bongs. We have known how these work for a very long time and we have.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Made them so that people who may be under the influence can offer them.

[Phil Broughton]

Can even operate maybe not safely with the torch, but you know, so that certain kind of mind looks at and goes, man, I can make that so much better with a laser. And the problem is lasers are not necessarily hot burning enough to actually properly combust your weed to then inhale. Incomplete combustion is a problem because. Okay, now what did I break down on my plant material to too? Oh, it's every organic molecule you possibly could break it down to. Some of which are carcinogens. Yeah.

[Dan Aykroyd]

So those are everything.

[Phil Broughton]

No.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

So your reefer becomes something even more dangerous. But you don't even really get the enjoyment of.

[Dan Aykroyd]

I am genuinely asking what is the consequences of the carcinogens? No, no, dumb questions.

[Phil Broughton]

You just said the word carcinogensic. But explain please, cancer causing agents.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Thank you.

[Phil Broughton]

Some of which are just straight up toxic, not just carcinogenic.

[Dan Aykroyd]

And do you not could get high at least?

[Bobby Bones]

Yes. Goodbye.

[Phil Broughton]

You might.

[Dan Aykroyd]

So just to be clear though, when.

[Bobby Bones]

You got away all this stuff, but you're also. This part of the show is about.

[Phil Broughton]

You'Re also effectively wasting weed. You're not completely combustible.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Okay, now I'm taking this very seriously. Not that I ever have, but the specific thing I'm saying here though is. So the laser is not even efficient as a heating.

[Phil Broughton]

It's not a good answer for it. It's just cool. I used a laser.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Do you not regularly burn carcinogens? When you do like weed that you smoke in a bong, for example, you.

[Phil Broughton]

Often get full combustion. The goal is to get full combustion to get the THC out.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Does that get the carcinogens out? Are there less?

[Phil Broughton]

You don't make them in the first place.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Okay. So the idea of using a laser in this case creates new problems that makes weed less healthy again.

[Phil Broughton]

It's time for another brand new acronym for. For you ljax. Laser generated Airborne contaminants. Which is something we regulate under.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Why do lasers create those?

[Phil Broughton]

So anytime you have a laser interacting with material, they start burning things off of it. Sorry. If it has enough power to start burning things off it, it will make fumes. It will do micro machining of surfaces and you start getting nanoscale particulates which are very exciting. Very.

[Bobby Bones]

They sound cool.

[Phil Broughton]

Yeah. But no. So normally you put on a respirator to protect yourself from particulates when you're doing woodwork and Savage, which you already mentioned, the laser cutters and burners. When you use those on your wood, rather than just making simple smoke or sawdust, you are making nanoscale particulates that go right through your respirator. And rather than getting stuck into your sinuses with all your mucus there, some may to your lungs, some may get stopped there. Suddenly the target organ for smoke is your liver rather than your lungs.

[Bobby Bones]

Christ.

[Dan Aykroyd]

See, this is the thing. This is. I'm so happy you put this down, man. It has been like eight years of doing this. We've never actually got you to run down where your actual expertise lies here. And it's wonderful to do. No, I fucking love it. It's wonderful. The show has been amazing. But the thing is, it's like a classic CES style problem where it's like, ah, have we got the solution to something?

[Phil Broughton]

But you have so many more problems.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Yeah, we may have created some more problems, but did we create a solution? I don't know. Do you think we did? Did you come? Did we? Can you tell us if we. What do you think? Can you buy this and then give us an idea?

[Bobby Bones]

Right, that's the bit that I kept waiting for you to get to because a lot of it is like the. Especially with, you know, like the idea of a laser bomb like this is. It's a worse way way to address a problem that has been pretty comprehensively solved. But.

[Dan Aykroyd]

But it's cool, right?

[Bobby Bones]

But it's sold in a way that.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Stoners would absolutely buy.

[Bobby Bones]

Yeah. That somebody's like, well, this is like, maybe this is cool enough that we could sell it. Even if it's delivering, like just of not even 25 of the experience. Like you're getting all the carcinogens and.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Getting an x for a 100.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

I don't know what percentage it feels like. When I was in high school and we were out of weed and our plug was out of town and so we'd scrape our bowls together to smoke out of some PVC pipe, you know, like, just.

[Phil Broughton]

Okay.

[Bobby Bones]

I was maxing out the dirt bag standards.

[Phil Broughton]

I was going to say you were in good shape there, right up until you said pvc.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

I mean, yeah, I'm trying to maximize the unhealthy, horrible, damaging, carcinogenic element.

[Dan Aykroyd]

There you go. You know, British culture.

[Phil Broughton]

So to correct you though, David, it's not you get all of the carcinogens that were there, it's you made some that weren't there in the first place.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yes.

[Bobby Bones]

My bad.

[Dan Aykroyd]

You Made a new problem for your not solution.

[Bobby Bones]

This is like the thing. I don't think this is not a novel observation, but the ways in which a commercial consideration, just the most basic commercial consideration, like can I sell this? Can I make this thing and bring it to market? That is the highest hurdle for any of these. Yeah. The technological stuff, the magic, the shit that you need like advanced degrees to be able to do doesn't often seem to be a problem. The bigger problem is trying to find some way to either invest in it or to find a way to sell it. And that's how you. That's like when these things get bad.

[Dan Aykroyd]

And then the fill destroying ones are where they fail. Both.

[Bobby Bones]

Yes.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Where they just like. Well, do we have a product that people want? No. Do we have a product that works? Absolutely not.

[Bobby Bones]

However, we do have a name.

[Dan Aykroyd]

We have science and we technically do have science. That's one thing your wokeness can't take away, Phil. They do have science.

[Bobby Bones]

Get emed technically.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Now the problem is do they understand the science? And that is the big one. And this is the thing, I think.

[Phil Broughton]

Or rather they understand their specific incredibly narrow niche and have never picked their head up to look and acknowledge there are other humans around them.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Why would they do that unless they're consumers?

[Phil Broughton]

Because some of them are customers.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Okay, consumer.

[Phil Broughton]

Oh, sorry.

[Dan Aykroyd]

You are not there to be happy. You're there to consumer. And this is CES baby. It's just a series of people. From the top are the people who actually release things. All the way down to the people releasing the laser bomb.

[Phil Broughton]

The other thing for CES is. I'm sorry, they move in fads. Well, I said there's something in the human spirit that says you just gotta attach lasers to things. Not according to the people who've gone to the floor. Not this year. People were not excited to staple lasers onto stuff. But in past years. Absolutely. And that first time we visited well together to CES in 2015, I actually did go to the floor.

[Dan Aykroyd]

2011, first time we went together. Which year was that?

[Phil Broughton]

First time we went DJ wooked year. No, I wasn't with you.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Nice.

[Dan Aykroyd]

You were. We met in the Californian.

[Phil Broughton]

Right. But I didn't get to meet DJ Wukid.

[Dan Aykroyd]

You.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

You.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Oh no, no.

[Phil Broughton]

You left me out.

[Dan Aykroyd]

One of my cool friends by which I mean the guy emailed like a year ago.

[Phil Broughton]

The. The first time I we were here together and I went to the floor in 2015 there was a whole bunch of post disaster Fukushima tech where people were developing so many New apps for your phone for integration into the radiation monitoring networks. There was no radiation monitoring network to integrate into it.

[Dan Aykroyd]

They just like made up a.

[Phil Broughton]

Well, we're gonna have some detectors that you can log into. Really? Would you like to buy some detectors, by the way, to add for the inevitable future, for the full network that you want?

[Dan Aykroyd]

Of course, the thing that will exist.

[Phil Broughton]

Or a detector you can plug into your phone. No, your phone doesn't generate enough voltage to actually run that detector to do it. There was a whole lot of radiation related. I am terrified of Fukushima in my backyard. Across the entire Pacific Tech that got rolled out, which vanished the following year. There's cycles.

[Bobby Bones]

We were talking about this this morning, too. And I think the thing that was kind of interesting about what you said about that too, was that and this again, you know, I kept sort of having this feeling down there. But you were describing as basically, you know, people wanted this spectrometer or whatever the term is. Is it good? I saw Craig Madsen's Chernobyl miniseries and I took copious notes during it. So I know a lot.

[Phil Broughton]

I loved that show.

[Bobby Bones]

I thought it was good, actually.

[Phil Broughton]

But people expected me to hate it, too.

[Bobby Bones]

I get a T shirt on that seemed.

[Dan Aykroyd]

I was born on Chernobyl, by the way.

[Phil Broughton]

Yes. Chernobyl day, baby. Right here.

[Bobby Bones]

Really?

[Dan Aykroyd]

April 25, 1986. I think the time zones work out with Russia.

[Phil Broughton]

Two disasters at the same time.

[Bobby Bones]

You were alive for the last Mets World Series win. That's beautiful. I want to be three disasters.

[Dan Aykroyd]

The collapse of multiple dynasties.

[Bobby Bones]

Anyway, but what you were saying about this is that, like, all of these things were, you know, not just flawed in the ways that you described, but they were like successful products insofar as they would generate a number with a decimal point in it that you could then look at and be like, oh, that seems high. Or that seems low and fine as. But as in the miniseries. But I think just in general, this was the point that you made. Is generating a number for somebody by way of an app or by way of some sort of device that is chargeable via USB C or something is not the same thing as informing them of anything. It's just producing a number. It's an outcome. But that's that.

[Phil Broughton]

Every time someone comes to you, I have this new detector. Is this good, good fill or is this worth the money? Okay, you have to know how to use it. I ask the questions. What are you trying to detect? Does the detector actually detect that? Do you know how to use it? And a lot of the consumer products in spaces like this related to environmental, health and safety, emergency response. No. Most people buying stuff, I am going to have no idea how to fucking use it, much less what it actually sees or how it works. And that's why I get angry constantly.

[Dan Aykroyd]

And as we wrap up more things to upset you, we'll go into more of this tomorrow, I think. So you can just buy illegal shit on Amazon just to wrap us up.

[Phil Broughton]

As I. As I regularly send you. It is the largest gray or black market in America. There was a really sad time. The other show I come to Las Vegas to go to to is DEF CON and Covid Central. I describe coming to CES as a chance to see the things I'm going to have to contend with when cheap professors buy stuff and bring it to me. Going to DEF CON I describe as a vacation to other people's problems. Because infosec problems are analogous to radiation and laser safety ones, but not actually mine to need to fix fix. But the stuff I can learn. One time I was there, I caught three senior Amazon engineers at a bar and I was aimed at them by a friend who said, those are the Amazon people. Talk to them. And I went over and at angry Cocktail point laid down, you are the largest black market and illegal importer of dangerous laser products and other things in the world. Specifically America.

[Bobby Bones]

Were they like, yes. Do you want our card or something?

[Phil Broughton]

To which, to their credit, thank you. To their credit, they looked ashamed at their shoes and said to me, I could fix this with a code push at midnight if anyone with the very heavily implied a certain bald owner cared.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Professor Charles Xavier's very unfair.

[Bobby Bones]

Very nasty and unfair.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Very nasty.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

A magneto anymore?

[Bobby Bones]

Cerebro.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

It's gone to his head.

[Phil Broughton]

But worse.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Out of my mind.

[Phil Broughton]

Having shared this story with contacts at the fda. The fda, they haven't quite surrendered to Amazon, but they do not have the staff, they don't have the bandwidth, they don't have the funding to try to deal with a problem like Amazon and instead are doing their best to work with Amazon, which is something you've written about. Talking. Talked about.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

It's just regulatory capture would happen if we gave guns to the police.

[Bobby Bones]

I was gonna.

[Dan Aykroyd]

I was gonna say. Anything that Ed is about to say is not reflective.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

It's. It's the. It's Ed, not the other Ed.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Yeah, yeah. Edward Ongueso Jr.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Some of you who cannot tell the difference between our voices.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Yeah. Because we sound so fucking similar.

[Bobby Bones]

I'm seeing double four heads.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Price award.

[Phil Broughton]

I thought there was Two years.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

In a way, we are the same. You know, Britain, Kenya, what's. You know, we are connected by.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Ed is also wonderful and I'm so happy he's been here. Anyway, please stop saying the thing that is legally actionable, if you can.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Well, I think it's not legally actionable because I'm asking, I'm actually asking a really good question. What I'm asking is, is what would things look like if regulatory agencies actually had the ability to enforce and not just to litigate. I think one example just being if they were able to enforce in the way that an ATF or a DA might when it comes to illegal harmful goods and services proliferating in an open air black market like this.

[Phil Broughton]

So that was a funny question you asked me the other, other day of do I think any government agencies are working well? And I had to take a long sad pause and go, the problem is I know how they're supposed to work. I also know how they are working. The DEA and ATF don't work nearly as well as we would like them.

[Bobby Bones]

To, but I feel like they're much more robustly funded. There's nothing else than like that Federal Trade Commission is like six guys in an office with a leak in the ceiling.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Like if we gave, I'm sure if we gave, like Lina Khan and her advisors, you know, like a Ruger, like they like. Yeah, we could get some things to happen.

[Phil Broughton]

Actually, the people that we would be most excited to have work to do this in association with the fda. Because the fda, they do not, they don't get guns.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Yeah.

[Phil Broughton]

They review things to see if it's safe for people to use and consume.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Right.

[Phil Broughton]

The interdiction point is the United States Postal Inspection Service, which are the mail cops. Shout out, shout out to the mail cops and the com staff. They are actual, like, please do not fuck with them.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Yeah.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

What's their conviction rate? It's like 99%.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

Yeah.

[Dan Aykroyd]

They just arrest in packages though, mate.

[Bobby Bones]

Yeah. Stop resisting. Like a padded envelope.

[Phil Broughton]

But again, there's not many people, people, many of them to do interdiction and investigation. Similarly for Customs, which had got stapled together to customs and Border Patrol under the Department of Homeland Security when it was an independent agency. They inspected everything. They were looking for illegally transported crude. They were looking for illegal cloth because specific weaves and contents are trademarked. They're looking for that. They were looking for, for fake tech. An iPhone that actually just has a piece of cardboard in the middle rather than chips. Customs used to look at all of this, we got no support time for anything other than drugs.

[Dan Aykroyd]

So on that note, I'm afraid we have to come to the end of this 90 plus minutes show. David J. Roth. Where can people find you?

[Bobby Bones]

Defector.com is the website. I do a podcast there. That's the distraction I'm on. Blue Sky Guy. David J. Roth is the handle there. And that is all I have to.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Say for that, Mr. Broughton.

[Phil Broughton]

So you can find me on Bluesky at Unranium. You can find me on my blog, funraniumlabs.com if you would like to learn more about me being angry about laser products, go to the Adventure and radiation part of the blog or reference rants.

[Bobby Bones]

Yo, tell them about your coffee product.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Yeah, go on.

[Phil Broughton]

The other thing I do is I make a concentrated coffee called Black Blood of the Earth. That is what I had to make in order to drink coffee again without adding sugar and cream to it.

[Dan Aykroyd]

We're gonna talk more about this tomorrow.

[Bobby Bones]

Rocks.

[Dan Aykroyd]

It does. And it's actually wholehearted endorsement how Phil and I met. And by the way, tomorrow's episode, which I'm about to talk up and we'll talk about more later, is gonna involve Phil a lot in talking about that. Mr. Ongueso Jr I was debating whether.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

To do a Nelson Mandela accent.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Been thinking about it all week.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

But to find out, you must go to the tech bubble.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Yeah, that's what I was afraid of.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Dot com. That's my newsletter. My podcast is that this machine kills and I'm on Twitter and Blue sky at Big Black Jacobin.

[Dan Aykroyd]

And you can catch me outside. How about that? That's what I wrote down in my notes there. I'm Ed Zitron. You have been so generous with your time. Thank you for listening. I am so grateful and love all of you. And we'll say that a few more times as we go. We're approaching the first episode. At the end of the first episode of the last day of CES proper, you will have another one after this. I have been joined by so many wonderful people. I want to thank everyone who's been on so far. This has been an incredible trip. Please listen to the totally canned message of that and I'll get one of you little pigs emailing me and being like, anthony, you need to update it. I've done like ten and a half flipping hours of audio on this. What more could you want from me?

[Sherlyn Lowe]

I'm online.

[Dan Aykroyd]

You can email me. I always email you back. Jesus Christ. I'm just kidding. I adore you, sir.

[Bobby Bones]

Let's get you home.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Okay, I am home. I'm in a Venetian hotel room. This is where I live.

[Phil Broughton]

Let's get you a drink.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matosowski. You can check out more of his music and audio [e-mail] m a t t o s o w s k-I.com you can email me at ezetteroffline.com or visit betteroffline.com to find more podcast links and of course my newsletter. I We also really recommend you go to chat wheresyoured at to visit the Discord and go to r betteroffline to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening. Better Offline is a production of Cool Zone Media.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

For more from Cool Zone Media, Visit.

[Dan Aykroyd]

Our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.

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[Oz Veloson]

Do you want to see into the future? Do you want to understand an invisible force that's shaping your life? Do you want to experience the frontier of what makes us human? On tech stuff, we travel from the mines of Congo to the surface of Mars, from conversations with Nobel Prize winners to the depths of TikTok to ask burning questions about technology. From high tech to low culture and everywhere in between. Join us Listen to tech stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Alec Baldwin]

Hey, it's Alec Baldwin. This past season on my podcast, here's the thing. I spoke spoke with more actors, musicians, policymakers and so many other fascinating people like writer and actor Dan Aykroyd.

[Dan Aykroyd]

I love writing more than anything. You're left alone, you know. You do three hours in the morning you write three hours in the afternoon, go pick up a kid from school and write at night, and after nine.

[Alec Baldwin]

Hours you come out with seven pages.

[Dan Aykroyd]

And then you're moving on.

[Alec Baldwin]

Listen to here's the thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, Podcasts or wherever.

[Sherlyn Lowe]

You get your podcasts, you are cordially.

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